


Deep Dream

by forbiddengrimer (robot5)



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: Abandonment Issues, Alcohol, Inconsistent Metaphors, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Post S4, Purple Prose, Recreational Drug Use, Run-On Sentences, Self-Loathing, Self-Worth Issues, Sharing a Bed, Sleep Deprivation, Slow Burn, Unreliable Narrator, Various OCs - Freeform, all the warnings that go with Richard, and Jared's past honestly, how i wrote this during one of the busiest and most stressful times of my life i'll never know, just loaded with gay longing, sleep deprivation will do that to you
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-20
Updated: 2018-04-09
Packaged: 2019-04-05 00:31:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14032227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robot5/pseuds/forbiddengrimer
Summary: Richard stops sleeping.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I can't believe I wrote this behemoth of a fic about this horrible, horrible gremlin who I would definitely fight given half a chance. This started as a stream of consciousness exercise to try and write Richard better, but somehow gained a plot.

Jared has an m-shaped mouth, em em em. Of course other people have m-shaped mouths, it’s a common shape. Richard thinks of it as the sound _em_ not the letter, the phonetic sound, sound affect and not effect. Affect is a change and effect is an outcome, and this is not an outcome, not a letter, and not a complete thought.

Obsessions come and go and he knows to rotate them out, to give his mind a chance to rest by handing it another thing to learn, to observe. Thinking on one problem, one thing, one sound, for too long drives anyone mad and shuts out the world in long uneven stretches.

He memorably forgot how to comfortably make eye contact with people in the sixth grade with thoughts and questions like _where are you supposed to look_ , _how long is too long_ , _what is the optimal time without it becoming awkward_ , _what intentions are conveyed with a glance_ , _what do you do with your eyes when they're not looking someone in the eyes_ , _where else do you look?_ It became a constant mantra, act, and thought for years afterward of trying to remember what comes naturally to everyone else, a lacking aptness of being able to exist, and an absolute refusal to examine hand gestures, his and anyone else’s afterward because what if he forgets again?

So he knows a little bit about some things and way too much about a few things, but not enough about this yet so nothing about this is an obsession.

It’s not a pronounced em all the time, only relaxed or in deep thought, and only barely noticeable with Jared’s normal half stretched expression of placid, benign cheer. Is it some kindness to know he doesn’t have to see it all the time? Richard thinks of it as an em so, so much that it’s still a slight startle, a gentle jolt to see it vanish with a wide smile or a loud sound like their celebratory shouting in Peter Gregory’s garage.

He thinks Jared knows he was looking, he knows he was, but it’s not like that, it’s just a fulcrum, a temporary anchor. The first time he’d looked in days, really looked, and the last time before they were partners again for the first time, while he was still working with Gavin Belson, before HooliCon. He’s lying to himself but he knows he’s lying so it’s okay, it’s okay for now he needs some lies sometimes.

A break, a break is good, just a step back, something else, something further from ems and errors. So he goes to Big Head or Professor Bighetti or Nelson but he’s never called him that. (He’s happy someone’s happy, isn’t he? No, no not really or not exactly. He doesn’t actually care, which could be worse; he can’t be happy for him. Maybe he isn’t incapable of it.) Old monster movies help and they talk, just talk. Bighead complains about teaching and faculty supervision, but talks positively about his students, how he thinks they look up to him, which is nice. Being nice is more important sometimes. (It’s not Richard thinks, not not not.)

“I thought you stopped liking these,” Big Head says.

“Hmm, what? No, why?” he says. The rubber costumes are making him feel claustrophobic so maybe this wasn’t a good idea, but then he thinks of set facts and actor trivia and he focuses on a different sort suffering, a suffering for a performance, an art to be proud of if you’re very very lucky and not him.

“You stopped watching these in college one day, remember? You gave me your old tapes and said monster movies were stupid,” Big Head says.

“They are stupid but, y’know, fun stupid like, when we were kids but um,” he says.

The last time he watched one wasn’t with Big Head, not at all. He remembers now. He wasn’t trying to impress anyone, he wasn’t, it wasn’t a date, they just were going to study, this kid in his class back at Stanford, it wasn’t, it wasn’t a _date_.

“I still think they’re kind of bad ass,” Big Head says.

“Mmm,” he says.

Okay, so there was no studying and he had the place to himself but Jonathan didn’t know that, and no, he didn’t tell him either and Tuesdays, Tuesdays aren’t date nights. He remembers a freckle on the side of Jonathan’s nose that he would stare at sometimes. It wasn't, it wasn’t a thing. So what if he had a gay experience in college; everyone does right? Everyone gets a blowjob from someone in college and if it happens to be from a he, a guy, it’s not a big deal.

So what if a series of nights of monster movies ended in make out sessions, culminating in a tight hold on his hips and a ‘have you ever done this before’ followed by a quiet ‘oh, oh god’ he’s never told anyone about?

It’s not like he dropped that class or avoided him entirely either. He only kind of avoided him and canceled the study group (he’s stupid it was never a study group), saying he had to help someone else (not like that just _not_ ).

‘Whatever Richard.’

It’s not 'whatever' okay, it’s not and fuck him for being so condescending.

He pulls and twists his hoodie string tight enough around his knuckles to turn the skin white.

“Dude are you okay?” Big Head asks.

“Great. Yeah, I'm great,” he says tightly.

He gets tired before the end and goes home.

Instead of sleeping, he stays up all night researching kaiju movies. The last Godzilla one with an actor in a rubber suit was in nineteen ninety eight. Huh, end of an era.

-

Jared looks at him imploringly with his em-shaped mouth and tells him he needs more sleep, suggesting mediation, fewer energy drinks, or trying exercise, any change could help. God, next time it'll be warm milk. Thanks mom, thanks. He starts to think about how to change, to make himself stop focusing on his lips in his down time if he had any, and his work time when he doesn't have any to spare. A subtle smile, whether genuine or awkward, and he can force his attention elsewhere because the em is gone, but the relaxed downright pouty default shape of laser focused budgeting when their working together is enough for Richard to hope for a catastrophic disaster just to get him away from him. His attention only flags in an emergency and the few times he’s seen him sleep talk, the later of which Richard refuses to think about because sometimes the range of possibilities are too horrible for even him to contemplate.

He has a text from his brother, or half-brother, or Ellis. He left for college when Richard was ten so it’s not like they're close. But he remembers him more than his own mom so it’s not like he doesn't care, but okay. Great, so he’s going to be an uncle soon, he’s known for half a year. He sent a gift, he’s not as heartless as everyone thinks. But he can’t leave right now, even if it’s only a few hours away by car, not when everything's so close and insubstantial. Expectation is a heavy fog that weighs on him, wrapping around his body and mind, his mind being the only useful thing about him. But he can keep pushing himself, he can power through.

Ellis won’t send anything else about the baby, no name or gender, so he settles on a green onesie and a hat that’s too big for a newborn, but he or she will grow into it at some point so it’s all fine.

They share a father but have different moms. Both of them are named after grandfathers neither of them share. Beyond the same hair color he doesn't think they have much in common, but he hasn't seen anyone in his family since Stanford so it’s all nebulous familiarity, which is footing too infirm for him to seek out without something to show for it.

A paper ball hits him square in the face.

“Earth to Richard,” Gilfoyle says.

“What? Yeah, yeah I'm fine,” he says. Why does everyone keep asking him that?

“Are you? We’ve been trying to talk to you for five minutes, but you keep staring off into space like a rogue hypnotist broke in and told you to creep us the fuck out,” Dinesh says.

Another paper ball hits him in the face from Gilfoyle.

“Yeah, I’m fine just tired.”

“What exactly is a rogue hypnotist and how would one hypnotize Richard without us knowing?” Gilfoyle says.

“I don’t know maybe he’s not in a union,” Dinesh says. “And he’s a fucking hypnotist so use your imagination.”

“The mind is highly suggestible,” Jared says mildly, traitorously.

-

So he hasn't slept again, but it keeps his mind on a single stressless track, without any care to where it’s going. It’s better than trying and failing to shift gears, and you can’t shift gears if you can’t think of more than one thing at a time. He thinks that makes sense. He’s meeting someone, some group or some investor who'll only tell him no anyway. He wonders if he’ll be too unaware to know he’s saying anything wrong or untranslatable. Parroting, it’s called parroting and he knows it’s parroting but maybe the slackness of his face instead of the tight twitching of his face will make him look confident and they’ll just think he’s a little weird.

Dinesh and Gilfoyle aren't allowed to go to meetings, well weren't but Erlich’s gone now so does it really matter? He said they weren’t house trained or something, but they can fake normal better than anyone else in the company. The last time he went without sleep for too long, Erlich shouted ‘straitjacket,’ which made him pause and no one did anything for a second. But after the second time Erlich shouted it, he and Jared all but tackled him and forced him to sleep by holding him down on the couch. He almost made it to the bathroom with his laptop, but Jared blocked him and caught his laptop before it hit the floor, which he probably should have thanked him for. He probably needed the sleep, but there aren't any deadlines right now so what does it matter?

Jared’s trying to get his attention.

He looks down and away from his face, glances at the line between where his sleeves end and the exposed skin of his wrists begins before re-positioning his eyes toward the pattern on the chest pocket of his shirt instead. He makes a note to research plaid and tartan names if he can only disconnect it from Jared enough to prevent him from coming back to the tall slight state of him which is easy, is definitely easy and always will be easy.

The meeting is, he doesn't know. Lackful sleep dulls the desperate edge of his mind. Lackful isn't a word, which is funny. It’s not important, there isn’t anything important. Existing like this doesn’t seem so bad.

-

“Hey there buddy,” Big Head says.

“Professor,” he says back.

“What are you doing?”

“Working. No, staring. Thinking or not thinking.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know but it’s… better.”

“Okay. Um, hey, I’ll be right back. I’m gonna go talk to Jared for a bit,” Big Head says.

“Hmm. Tell him to stop wearing tattersall unless he wants to be mistaken for a horse,” he says. “Unless there’s something we don’t know.”

He looks up and catches Gilfoyle and Dinesh openly staring at him.

“What?” he says.

They turn away, but do a poor job of pretending not to keep looking at him, which means they know something is up, and Big Head knows something is up, which what the fuck he’s not even part of the company and never was. Fucking traitors. He gets up and quietly follows stupid, trusting, unaware Big Head to his own room where his loft mattress is on the floor and Jared is standing there wringing his hands.

“Yeah, he’s not good,” Big Head says. “He said to stop wearing tat-tattersall? And something about you being a horse.”

“Oh dear. Has he ever been like this before?” Jared asks.

“Yeah. Back in college he stayed up for almost five days a few times. Me and this other guy hid his laptop and locked him in his room, which didn’t really work at first, but that’s only because I let him out by accident.”

“He is quite charming. He can negotiate his way out of almost anything,” Jared says, staring off into space dreamily, which distracts Richard enough to miss the next few bits of conversation.

“We could do what Erlich used to do,” Big head suggests.

“As much as I admire Erlich for his great passion and kindness, I don’t want to have to resort to force. Eventually Richard will learn to hide out elsewhere and we won’t be able to help him the next time this happens.”

Stupid kind Jared, stupid Erlich, stupid Big Head. It doesn’t actually matter whether he sleeps or not, nothing changes. It’s unimportant now, irrelevant. No one in town will touch him and what kind of CEO does this? What kind of CEO doesn’t go home and does fuck all with his company? He’s reminded of the Wiley E. Coyote cartoons his little sisters (not his sisters, not actually related just his mom’s kids from her new marriage, technically stepmom, technically just Jenna, Jennifer, his dad’s ex-wife) were watching on the computer the last Christmas he was actually there. Running in place with no footing and falling anyway if that metaphor even makes fucking sense.

“Tattersall was a pattern used on horse blankets in London in the late eighteen hundreds. It’s your shirt pattern,” he says, startling them. “I wasn’t implying, um.”

The shocked slackness of Jared’s face is momentarily too much like when Richard came to his condo after the HooliCon disaster. His features are too much, too relaxed, but not devastated or sad and needful like last time. Sad and curious, but hopeful, which he can deal with right now. His mouth isn’t quite the classical cupid’s bow shape now that he thinks about it, now that he lets himself stare for longer than one to five seconds at a time. It’s more like a child’s drawing of a distant seagull when it stretches wide, too round, too far.

Big Head nods awkwardly and moves past him, maybe to block the door, maybe to leave but who really cares?

“Yeah, okay I’ll try and sleep but um. I can’t promise I won’t get up and walk around until then so, maybe keep an eye on me. Just in case.”

“Thank you Richard,” Jared says, and he sounds like he is genuinely thankful, like Richard gave him a gift just by succumbing to his wants just the tiniest bit.

“Why is my mattress on the floor?” he asks.

“Just in case you had trouble getting up the ladder in your sleep deprived state. Or if you didn’t want to sleep. I was prepared to enact Erlich’s previous plan despite my personal objections.”

God he’s so hmm, something. Jared looks away, maybe bashful and shy, maybe he said Jared was ‘something’ out loud, or maybe Jared feels guilty for considering Erlich’s old plan to force him to sleep. He’s never considered Jared’s hands before or his neck, but maybe now that the mystery of his lips has been solved he can move on. He watches him try to swallow his words.

“Do you not like my shirt?” Jared asks him quietly.

“No, I love it. It gives me something to think about.”

Jared really is blushing now, which he knows real Richard would shut down and flee from given half a second’s chance but he feels distinctly fake right now, a lesser diluted Richard he can take in larger doses. No bad side effects, over the counter and easy to access without the arduous task of getting a prescription.

“I think all the time Jared. Sometimes it helps to change the subject,” he says and the subject is, hmm, not moving away from him.

It’s not the same tattersall shirt of before but it’s the same button down style, stiff enough under his fingers that it could be starched. Jared wouldn’t go to the dry cleaners, too much money maybe, or maybe he spent a horrible year as a kid forced into doing laundry and nothing but. Both seem likely. He traces the outline of where the chest pocket would be if there was one, then lays his palm down flat. He feels the edge of an indent with his thumb before Jared delicately takes a hold of his wrist.

“Richard, you need sleep,” he says, voice low.

“Yeah, my heart’s beating faster than yours, lack of sleep and all,” he says. Jared isn’t stopping him so he explores the indent with his fingertips and palm, he feels pained when he wonders if it’s the result of a horrible injury, which must show on his face because Jared looks at him sadly, eyebrows tilted, em-shaped mouth slightly open. But he could have been born with it, a good subject for more, ah, research later, ever further down the rabbit hole. The hand on his wrist has tightened but still isn’t stopping him from anything.

“Are you sure you’ve been sleeping?” Richard laughs, moving his hand higher. “Your heart’s beating faster than mine now.” He get as far as the slightest touch to the bare skin above Jared’s shirt collar before Jared abruptly shuts him down.

“Sleep,” Jared says, firmly holding his hand away and down. The Jared of before, the Jared who called him a catch, who meticulously organized job offers and who told him how much leaving Hooli meant to him because of Richard, Richard specifically, that Jared would have let him continue doing whatever it was he was doing.

“Fine,” he says, not at petulantly. He pulls his hand away and lays down, doesn’t care that Jared looks slightly hurt, doesn’t care that he still has his shoes on, or that he stumbled and fell down a little too hard when he hit the mattress.

The door shuts and the lights turn off, but it’s still daylight so it doesn’t make much of a difference. Jared sits cross legged on the floor next to him, long limbs folded carefully, expression calm and still.

“You can go now,” Richard says.

“You asked me to stay,” Jared says.

“I don’t remember that.”

“Oh, Richard,” he says, but it sounds resigned, disappointed. Not worried.

He doesn’t like this, this lack of control, of not knowing why he does or says anything. Inhibition? No, not that definitely not. Wanting to know and not wanting to know everything about a subject, a person. He can’t predict himself anymore, he can’t predict Jared.

“Wake me in fours hours,” he says.

“You need more sleep than that,” Jared says, fondly? Placidly? He can’t tell anymore.

“Fine,” he says. “Fine.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Drinks and advice, featuring Monica.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you everyone for your wonderfully kind comments, it really means a lot to me. My days of not sleeping are over, but I really wanted to finished editing this chapter before passing out. 
> 
> Chapters 3 and 4 are done, but will take a bit longer to edit. As a side note, the title is a reference to the album Deep Dream by Daddy Issues, which I may or may not have listened to on repeat while writing chapters 1 and 2. (I definitely did.) So uh, mood?

Daylight shines through the blinds when he wakes up. His bladder is full, his mouth is dry and he’s hungry, starving but his mind is empty, clear. There’s a glass of water next to him which he almost knocks over picking up which really, Jared should have know not to put next to him if he didn’t want him to spill it. He’s momentarily torn between his body’s warring needs before he takes the water with him to the bathroom, chugging it dry the whole way.

Five days awake and almost a full day asleep and it’s the best he’s felt in a long time. Not since they made him CEO of his own company again, y’know, the second time. Five days. Oh god Jared, he practically groped him, not groped him really, it’s not, it wasn't sexual, just curious, just something, a topic or research subject, just research he hasn’t been able to stop thinking about. It happens to him sometimes, like when he was so focused on his decentralized internet he walked into the pool and barely noticed. But he’s reset his system and fixed the bugs so it’s fine now, he’s fine now. Okay so five days is clearly too many, but the thought of just existing and being here with his mind fully functioning on too many fucking cylinders, shifting around his brother, his company, and finally getting stuck on fucking Jared is too much. So just three days at a time, four days max and then sleep and its coping with, with whatever. The next time he starts to hyperfocus he can stop it, he has control. It won’t be all the time, just when he needs a small breather.

“I’m fine now,” he tells Gilfoyle and Dinesh while shoving dry cereal in his mouth.

“We don’t care, just stop creeping us out,” Dinesh says.

“What did you do to Jian Yang?” Gilfoyle says.

“What are talking about?” Richard says.

“He’s been avoiding you. You haven’t noticed?” Gilfoyle says.

“No,” he says. He hasn’t been capable of noticing anything the past few days, which has kind of been exactly the point, but he’s not going to tell them that, the fuckers. “Unlike you two, I’ve been busy.”

“Oh really? With what exactly?” Dinesh asks flatly.

“Just… work,” he says.

“Bullshit,” Gilfoyle says.

“Where’s Jared?” he asks.

“You know that client meeting you totally fucked up the other day?” Dinesh says.

“Yes,” he says. “Vaguely.” More like just nodding at whomever was speaking, Jared looking kindly uncomfortable, and the plant in the corner. A ficus probably.

“Yeah, well he’s trying to smooth things over so,” Dinesh gestures vaguely.

“Fuck. God alright,” he says and he has no idea what Dinesh meant but he’s calling Jared, ignoring the missed call from his brother, his undeleted search history, and a text from Monica because it’s not that he doesn't trust Jared, but Jared’s too trusting, too naive. He doesn't know the tech well enough and every client and company is looking to fuck him over right now. He can barely control a goddamn thing in his life right now but he can control this.

It’s a double echo of a hello that greets him because Jared is in the kitchen bemusingly answering his phone while looking at him with a wide em of a mouth and fuck he was so wrong, he isn’t coping with anything. He definitely can’t handle this fresh from sleep and too, too clear headed to ignore or not care what his mind wants to think about. Jared tells him everything went well, that they understood genius sometimes comes in socially awkward packages, which he let go even though he wanted nothing more than to correct them but it worked in their favor this time, and-

“Wait, so we got them?” he asks.

Jared holds up an honest to god contract, beaming.

There’s something very wrong with him; he knows he’s happy, but it’s not for the right reasons. But he’s not going to think about that right now, so he lets Jared hold him at arms length by his shoulders for a moment before he pulls himself away. He’s holding his breath because he doesn’t need to let the tension go yet, he doesn't need to know how he smells too, or remember because they’ve been closer before. He can’t relax yet there's too much to do now.

“That’s, that’s good that’s. Um,” he says.

“Holy shit,” says Dinesh.

“Yes, who would have thought our business developer would be the best one to handle business,” Gilfoyle says.

“Okay first of all, shut the fuck up. Second, you’ve met Jared,” says Dinesh.

“You should handle this stuff from now on,” Richard says.

“But Richard, this is your victory,” Jared says softly, earnestly which really describes him in every perfect way from the shape of his throat to the quiet careful way he exists in the orbit of the colossal failure that is everything Richard has done up to this point. As Jared steps closer, he consciously and very deliberately takes a step back, twisting his mouth to control a twitch, but resolutely looking forward. If he keeps his distance, everything will be fine.

“While I possess the necessary business acumen, we need you. You understand. You created this fragile beautiful company stretching it’s legs and taking it’s first few shaky steps outside the loving, chaotic cradle it was born in,” Jared says, strange as always.

“No, it’s not my victory. I barely remember being there. And even if it was, it’s only because I managed to keep my mouth shut and not fall on my ass like, like a kid learning to walk which I guess would mean he was in a pretty terrible accident that destroyed his motor function but. Just take Gilfoyle or Dinesh, they know the tech.”

“Not as well as the CEO, not like you,” Jared says, not quite pleading, not saying it like he used to, and god why can’t Jared just let it go like he used to? He hoped he could be rid of this, this unwanted unneeded fascination but the ever present shadows around Jared's eyes are deeper and just a touch hard. With his mouth relaxed like this its as if there are five different distinct planes making up his upper lip alone which how the fuck does he do that and how dare he it isn't helping him to know about this right now it isn’t helping a goddamn thing.

“Well, that’s just too fucking bad,” he says, and he knows how petty and angry he sounds. “Not every CEO sees every client. I can delegate and I’m delegating so just, fucking handle it. Are you the diz bev, no fuck. Viz leg, jizz lez,” he takes a deep breath. “Are you the biz dev or aren’t you?”

Jared’s never towered over anyone, he’d bet his life on that. But his spine stretches just a notch higher, his limbs move just a bit more slowly, stiffly, steeled, and the sincere eye contact is going to give him a heart attack before the sleep deprivation does he’s sure of it.

“As your biz dev,” Jared says, a touch of a low hesitant sibilant S on ‘as’ and it’s so kind, more than he deserves but in Jared’s world it’s downright stern. “I am telling you in my honest opinion that the best thing for the company is to have the CEO meet clients. We can’t risk offending people in our fledgling state by making them feel unimportant.”

“I need a few days. Just to not meet anybody,” he says quietly, pleadingly. It’s pathetic. “Maybe more,” he finishes and as long as Jared doesn’t come any closer he thinks he can hold his ground.

Jared’s countenance changes instantly, shifts and settles on a smile.

“Of course, a few days it is,” he says, with all the charisma of a peppy fifties sitcom. “And please remember Richard, you can tell me anything.”

No, he really fucking can’t.

-

A lack of Jared’s commonly overbearing nature is part of the puzzle. He isn’t the same, nothing is the same and he doesn’t know why it grates at him so much. Big Head is different but it’s better for him, and better for Big Head too. Dinesh isn’t the same but it doesn’t bother him at all. Gilfoyle is Gilfoyle. Erlich is, well he left so there’s nothing to consider. People leave him all the time, it doesn’t bother him anymore, stopped bothering him a long time ago. Maybe when Ellis came back from college strange, or maybe when his step mom divorced his father and didn’t take him with her. There are too many maybes to consider. Erlich would probably shout at him to get his act together, that if he wanted to stop doing something he should just stop doing it full stop and be done with it. _Are you a man or are you a mouse Richard?_ Well it’s not that easy, if he could just stop it wouldn’t be a fucking problem now would it?

So he’s working from his room today, nobody else, no distractions, no other thoughts but the work. There’s a meeting with Monica later, officially to look over the new client contract but surreptitiously to get him out of here.

Guarded, Jared’s guarded. The naked abandon of gesture and expression have been replaced with a half second hesitant full consideration. He’s hesitated before hasn’t he? He vaguely remembers a light touch on his wrist, a fluttering heartbeat underneath his palm, an indent under his thumb, and Jared’s face and ears flushing red.

Walking helps, just a quick walk around the room to get his thoughts rearranged, his blood pumping or unpumping which, not a word. Neither was ‘pumpedness’ which Jared once used in a sentence best left forgotten, but he let that go. Why did he let that go? He stops short while idly erasing his increasing weird, even for him, search history when he sees an email notification from his step mom and a text from Ellis. The family newsletter, which he hasn’t been in since he was interviewed on TV thank god, and Ellis asking him again if he’s going to be there when his possible niece or nephew is born. Bile and panic rise in his throat and he can’t go out into the hallway right now, not when he’s specifically trying to avoid a certain taller someone who definitely won’t leave him alone to throw up in peace, but god what if he does? What if his estimation has gone down so far in Jared’s eyes he won’t even get up to knock on the door? Instead of replying he ignores the text, marks the email as read, and looks up what that shallow dip in Jared’s chest could be. It’s centering. There’s nothing wrong with dipping back into what his mind currently wants to focus on as a coping mechanism for just a moment. Besides, Jared’s ears are always flushed red. Maybe there’s something to that.

Tonight can’t come quickly enough, which is why Monica lets him come with her to the grocery store again.

“I’m not sure I understand. If both you and Jared have looked over this, you don’t need me,” Monica says. “Don’t get me wrong Richard, I’ll look it over for you. But you can’t come to me with every client contract. I’ve got Bream-Hall and-”

“I know, I know. I just really need to get out of the house,” he says, thinking of Jared hovering around corners, sending him concerned looks he thinks he can’t see, and concerned texts he doesn't reply to with more than one word answers. Gilfoyle and Dinesh must think he’s insane or close enough to finally losing it.

“Everything okay?”

“Yeah just, maybe getting a little too big for an incubator,” he says, laughing at his own joke.

“No word from Erlich yet?” she asks.

“No,” he sighs. “Just. Lots of family stuff. Everything feels so fragile right now. One wrong step and-”

“Richard, Pied Piper has survived more than it’s fair share of disaster and come out the other side. Right now, you’re stable. You’re just not used to it.”

“Maybe,” he says. He chews his lip and lightly kicks at a display stand.

“Family problems?”

“Same old, same old. It’s,” he sighs. “It’s a lot to explain.”

“That bad, huh?”

“You have no idea.”

“Well, lucky for you, family problems are my specialty,” she says, grabbing several bottles of red wine off the shelf. “We’ll need these.”

“Oh come on, Monica. Wine gives me a really bad hangover,” he says. Drinking is much less appealing than sleep deprivation, but he doesn’t need anyone to know that.

“But you’re not buying,” she says. “And I have liquor at home if you really need it.”

A change, any change at all in his mental state, which is fine by the way, would be ideal right now.

“The family stuff, is that, is that from personal experience?” he asks. He can feel his phone vibrate in his pocket but he ignores it.

“A little,” she says. “But you should have heard about Peter’s family. A horror show of neurosis.”

“That… doesn’t surprise me.”

-

“...so it’s one in the morning and my sister and I are standing in the kitchen, half covered in mud, trying to hide this bottle of tequila behind our backs while our mom tells us how proud of us she that we’re finally getting along,” Monica says, laughing.

Monica’s apartment is small, which he didn’t expect but honestly he doesn’t know what he was expecting. Maybe just wood paneling and a boardroom? Domesticity and just existing in a living space without everything reflecting a work environment is a foreign concept after living in Palo Alto for so long. He hasn’t talked about anything yet, doesn’t really want to, just mentioned that he has a brother and asked for a glass of wine. Future Richard can deal with the hangover.

“Just when we think she’s finally going to leave, Morgan loses her grip and the bottle hits the floor with the heaviest thud I’ve ever heard. And somehow it didn’t break! Instead it just slowly rolls out from behind us into full view. No one moves, no one says anything.”

He laughs, it sounds like the kind of story Erlich would be proud of, though a wayward tequila bottle does make him feel a bit queasy. At least there were no keyboards involved this time. He hasn’t touched his phone since they left the grocery store, intent on relaxing, on not thinking about anything or anyone he doesn’t want to but his mind keeps wandering.

“Mom watches the bottle ‘til it stops rolling, sighs, and just tells us to go to bed. ‘You’re both grounded. I’ll decide for long in the morning.’”

There’s a break in the conversation after that and Monica takes the opportunity to refill her glass from her place on the couch. He doesn’t like people touching him at the best of times, especially if they want something. Monica doesn’t want anything from him which is a relief, except maybe competence but the atmosphere is very expectation-less right now. He doesn’t know what to do with physical contact, with want, what does someone mean by it, what do they- why do they want from him? He may have over thought people wanting things from him at one point and consequently forgot how to deal with the attention naturally, but the wine relaxes him enough that he doesn’t feel tense anymore.

“You and your brother ever do anything like that?” Monica asks.

He blames glass number three for his loose tongue.

“No, no. He did. But he’s seven years older than me, so.”

“Ah,” she says, idly swirling her wine glass.

“Half-brother.”

“How’d that work?”

“His mom divorced dad. Dad married my mom. She died a year or so after I was born. I don’t really remember her. Then he met and married my step mom soon after,” he says. “I didn’t even know I was supposed to be missing anyone until some kids told me she couldn’t be my real mom because she’s clearly Asian and I’m clearly not.”

“Oh no,” Monica says. She looks mostly uncomfortable, and a bit like there’s a war going on her face, like she’s not sure if she should laugh or not.

“I didn’t get it,” he says, leaning into it. “Sometimes people would ask me if I was adopted. I’d just roll my eyes and say, ‘No, she is.’ Because she is! She never knew her parents.”

“Oh no,” Monica says again, but this time she gives in and starts laughing into a pillow.

“God, what assholes. I didn’t know what they actually wanted! They just thought I was making a joke,” he says laughing, and it’s the first time he’s ever actually laughed about it, how his mom isn’t his mom but she is, how he’s not her son but he is, how she has daughters with her new husband who are his sisters but not. He’s spent more of his life with Ellis at this point than with his sisters, but that’s not their fault.

“Oh no, I’m so sorry,” she says, laughed out.

He remembers a particular day in the incubator, back when they were still fighting Gavin Belson’s lawsuit. It was some corporate trust exercise Jared had roped them into, or not roped really he agreed to it, he wasn’t really forced. Jared just asked him and he said okay. Everyone goes around and takes turns telling two truths and one lie and everyone has to guess which one is the lie. Gilfoyle went first and said something about fucking Jared’s mom, to which Jared said. He said-

“Jared never knew his mom,” he says.

How anyone can say that with such kindness is beyond him. His eyes were so soft and relaxed, he even smiled like Gilfoyle was a small child who just gifted him a poorly made clay sculpture, crafted with love and care. Everyone stopped, even Gilfoyle froze for moment, before going back to his usual mood or whatever. Jared tried to continue the exercise but Erlich rushed in, saying there were zoning inspectors on the way, which turned out to be Mormons. Carla and the other new hires quickly left, saying they were getting lunch, not that Richard blames them. There was sunlight shining in through the window. He remembers looking at Jared, really looking at him for the first time and seeing the reflection of a silver hair on the right side of his head above his temple. He remembers having the urge to touch him, just to briefly run his fingertips through it to see if there were any more or if that was the only one. Instead he shook it off, pushed it down, and said ‘sorry Jared,’ about the exercise not, not anything else, and went to go work in his room the rest of the day. He thinks that’s where it started, slow and soft, nearly imperceptible.

“How is Jared?” Monica asks.

“Fine,” he says, he thinks, he doesn’t know, doesn’t ask because he doesn’t need to know anything else, has so many facts his mind might crash. A complete hard drive failure seems practically blissful.

“I,” Monica declares. “Am going outside to smoke.”

“Mmm,” he says.

Maybe he should create a record: Facts About Jared O.J. Donald Dunn I Can’t Fucking Forget and Keep Obsessing Over for Reasons Obvious to Everyone Else But I Can’t Fucking Figure Out. Putting everything down into a document and getting it out of his head might let him finally rest. But if Gilfoyle and Dinesh found it which, they definitely would with his luck, he’d never hear the end of it. And if writing it all down isn’t the end of it then it’ll only further spur on this nuisance of an unwanted focal point he doesn’t have a name for. By the time Monica comes back from the balcony, he’s finished his wine.

“Can I tell you a secret?” he asks. He’s going to anyway.

“It’s what I’m here for,” she says, stretched out on the couch bonelessly.

“I’m going to be an uncle,” he says, listlessly.

“Wow,” she says. “How much longer until, um, so who’s pregnant?”

“Ellis. No fuck, not Ellis,” he says. “His wife.”

“You don’t sound happy,” she says.

“I haven’t seen him since I was twelve. I don’t think happy is the word for how I’m supposed to feel,” he says. “I missed his wedding.”

“On purpose?” she asks.

He doesn’t say anything because he isn’t really sure.

“It happens. People can drift apart,” she says. “Richard, you’re allowed to not know how you feel.”

Not knowing is the best way to put things, it’s easier, tidier.

“Can I tell you a secret?” she asks. “Well, not a secret but you can’t tell any of the guys, especially not Jared.”

His mind trips over _not Jared_ because Jared knows everything about anything that’s happened to him since they met. Maybe before that would be a problem but now with this strange, subtle distance?

“Okay, I promise.”

“You remember Carla?”

“Blue hair, amazing ability to get along with Gilfoyle and Dinesh,” he pauses, wondering where this is going. “How could I forget?”

“She lied,” she says. “She doesn’t hate me because she’s tired of men trying to make her befriend every woman she works with. She hates me because we used to date.”

“What?” he says. His brain refuses to imagine the logistics, stops and stutters out the mental equivalent of a file not found error. Telling him this can only go so, so badly because this is so different from what he expected. The next time he sees Carla, he’s going to avoid her eyes, make any excuse not to be in the same room. She’s going to know that he knows. Jared’s going to know something’s different, he’s going to find out or worse, Gilfoyle will know.

“Briefly! Very briefly. Don’t make it weird. But she takes everything so hard so,” she gestures vaguely in the air.

“Why are you telling me this?” he says, and he can hear his voice strain a few notches higher than he intended.

“The point is,” she says. “You can’t control how you feel about… things sometimes. She can’t help feeling hurt that it never went anywhere and I can’t help but… not know how I feel.”

There’s a wistfulness to her face and he can’t help but feel like this is something private, that he shouldn’t know, shouldn’t see this, it’s too much. The words ‘I didn’t know you were...’ are on the tip of his tongue but ‘don’t make it weird,’ she said, she said that specifically so he won’t, he can’t.

“It’s erm,” he coughs. “Um.”

All of this is already weird, uncomfortable and guarded, like being family with someone who never liked him in the first place, or missing a connection that was never there to be missed. It’s a false sense of longing or being nostalgic for a place you’ve never even seen, a nebulous infirm sadness that’s never felt real.

“Nebulous,” he says, cringing. “Okay wait.”

But there’s so much Jared never had a chance to have, and he knows he doesn’t feel the pain any less keenly. There’s always a slightly too stretched or too soft edge on his face when casually reflecting on his past, like a man only recently made solid who doesn’t know how to use his facial muscles yet, or who learned how to try and seem normal from poorly animated early morning cartoons about morality.

“You never had it so you never really miss it but. Um, you do so. fuck I’m bad at this,” he finishes.

“Yeah, but I think I know what you mean.”

“I don’t think I’m mad it’s just… weird,” he says quietly. Disappointing, it’s disappointing.

“Can I sleep on your couch?” he asks.

“Sure,” she says. “I need to sleep soon anyway, early meeting.”

“Hmm.”

“And Richard,” she says from the doorway. “Give yourself a break sometimes.”

He sits there and doesn’t move for while, waiting for the all the little sounds of life in the apartment to settle. Barely any time at all passes before he gets his phone out, ignoring all notifications to impulsively call Jared.

“Richard, is everything alright? How did your meeting with Monica go?” Jared asks, and he can tell there’s more he wants to ask, that he’s holding back. He can feel the nervous energy in the way he doesn’t ask for every little detail anymore.

“I- hold on,” he says, before quietly slinking out to the balcony.

“Sorry, I was um,” he says. “Do you want to know where I’ve been tonight?”

“Yes,” Jared says. “If you would like to tell me.”

“I think I had too much wine. I’m going to be feeling it tomorrow,” he laughs.

“Do you need me to come get you?”

“No,” he says quickly, too quickly. “No just, tell me about your day.”

“Tell you,” Jared pauses. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything, just talk to me,” he whines because it’s cold being out here all alone on the balcony.

Jared obliges. In his at first haltingly, kindly precise voice he describes a gentle, low lilt of miscellanea ranging from the intricacies of contract law he’s been reading up on to the best brand of tea on hand in the incubator. He pulls his hoodie up and sits down, feeling the tight expectations of the day melt away into the sound of a placid, soothing need being met. While drifting off and thinking about how this is the closest thing to meditation Jared will ever convince him to try, he begins to notice Jared stays firmly on the topic of work related items, never straying too far into anything that isn’t at least tangentially related to Pied Piper. He wants more, it’s selfish and greedy, but he tries to keep his mouth shut and ignore himself. In the middle of the latest story of a petty conflict between Dinesh and Gilfoyle, he caves.

“Tell me about something else, Jared. Something not related to work,” he asks, hoping he hasn’t ruined anything, hasn’t broken the warm spell of calm washing over them where he can pretend everything is just like is was before HooliCon.

“I don’t have time for anything else right now,” Jared says after a moment.

“We’re stable right now, or more stable than we’ve been in the past, god, ever. You can, you can give yourself a break sometimes,” he says. His mouth feels dry, like he’s been the one talking and not Jared.

“Are you angry with me?” Jared asks, almost too low to make out.

“No! No, but no one can only do one thing, think about only one thing non-stop and not go a little insane from it. You deserve a break to, to relax or bird watch or,” _go on dates_ , he doesn’t say. “Or see your other friends. Give yourself a break sometimes,” he finishes lamely, out of breath and out of steam.

“I’ve never been happier in my life than as your CFO Richard and being by your side,” Jared says, like its so sweet and simple, a given fact in world which has given Jared nothing at all. There’s nothing he can say, no defense against such a naked declaration.

“Okay,” he says back, voice strained. He can imagine him sitting in the garage, white undershirt too pale against his already pale skin, wide em smile honest and fond despite everything Richard has done. How he can see him as anything other than a disappointment is beyond him.

"Are you sure you don’t need me to come get you? It’s no trouble-”

“No, no I’ve got a couch I should be getting back to.”

“Alright, but if you need me-”

“Yeah, if I need you I’ll call,” he says, wondering to what extent he means this.

“Sweet dreams,” Jared says. “We need you well rested.”

“Okay. I, I will be,” he lies.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Richard has no follow through.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have three different people leaving the country for two years minimum in the next week and barely enough time to bake them going away desserts. Please enjoy this horrible goblin while I rush off to work.
> 
> This is my favorite chapter so far.

Early morning on the Hooli campus isn’t busy until half an hour before the work day starts. Despite the high quality of the Hooli cafeteria, parked food trucks are swarmed daily by all the Hooli drones Richard could never get along with. It’s well before the rush and well before any sane man would come into work, so he orders a burrito without cilantro, which they only remember to do half the time any way, and waits.

He needs someone who hates him, not just dislikes him for how awkward he is or how selfish, but actively hates him. If he can somehow harness that, figure out why, what makes him so easily detested then maybe he can force it, push away the people who can’t see him for who he is and be done with them, not have to make any choices, not worry about who deserves what and how nothing lasts anyway.

Predictably, they left the cilantro in and predictably he’s spotted Gavin Belson on his usual route in. He’s just going to have to accept being sick to his far too sensitive stomach later.

“Richard,” Gavin says, somehow condescending and surprised at the same time. “You look like shit.”

“Yeah I know,” he says, rubbing his own face. “Didn’t sleep.”

“Why are you here? Are you following me?”

“What? No. I mean, a little. I did use to work here and you never change your route in so,” he shrugs. “But not following you following you, just-”

“What do you want? Because unless you’ve changed your mind about-”

“No, no I haven’t,” he says.

“Then as pleasant as this conversation is, I have to go,” Gavin says. “Unlike you, I have an actual business to run.”

“Why hate me? Why do,” he stutters. “Why do you hate me?”

“Are you kidding me?” Gavin says incredulously, angry and loud. “What is this, some twisted way to get me to like you, to leave Pied Piper alone to ruin me? Is this some moral crisis you’re experiencing? Like a character in a Charles Dickinson novel? Am I just a character in a play to you?”

“Actually, it’s Dickens. Charles Dickinson was-” Richard starts.

“See! It’s shit like this, Richard. You wanna know why no one likes you? It’s because you’re a deeply, deeply unpleasant person. You’re just selfish. And mean,” Gavin practically shouts. He’s barely walked more than a few feet before Richard gets in one more question.

“What if someone, what if she,” he says and he doesn’t know why he says she, there’s no she in his life, certainly no woman that fits that description. In a distant part of his mind he knows who he’s actually referring to, which specific him, but it seems too much like showing his hand to admit that, too close to acceptance and he’s not fucking doing that, not by a mile. “What if she knows all this about me and doesn’t hate me?”

“Well, it sounds like she’s in love with you. Seems like miracles do happen.”

“How do I stop it?” Richard asks.

“One day Richard, you’re going to have to learn that the world doesn’t cater to your whims,” Gavin says. “Knowing you, she’ll come to her senses soon enough.”

“Can I ask you one more question?” he asks. Gavin does an incredulous slow turn toward him before responding with an emphatic no.

“And if you want to talk business or talk to me about anything else ever again, please, please, go through my lawyer.”

Maybe Gavin’s right, stranger things have happened. Maybe he can just be himself, be the kind of asshole who doesn’t return phone calls for no other reason then he doesn’t want to, who’s too selfish and cruel to care who’s suffering just as long as he gets even one thing he wants out of it, ruining people like a petty child knocking over anthills and even willingly becoming the other woman (he doesn’t know the phrase for the male version) and ruining other people’s happy relationships because why not?

-

It’s fall break, less than a year before he dropped out. In between his burgeoning habit of skipping classes and coding through the night, he goes to parties. Free booze and too loud music provide a sensory change from the too quiet nights where he becomes far too aware of his room mate’s breathing and the sounds of the dormitory to sleep. He’s never had to share a room with anyone before, and even two years into his degree he can’t get used to it; it’s nerve-wracking. The social lubrication house parties provide are enough of a distraction to make him forget anything else in his life for a while, even if he barely knows anyone except Big Head, who always leaves early anyway.

He fell asleep on the floor at some point. In the pitch black dark, he steps over sleeping couples clinging together in solidarity and the occasionally lone poor fuck who no one cares enough about to take home to at least pass out on a warm couch. The back porch is screened in, with tacky, dilapidated couches on either end, both of which are occupied, one with an unmoving sleeping figure and the other with two people sitting and smoking, a stranger and fucking Johnathan from freshman year, who Richard would rather forget, has tried his best to. But it’s hard to forget someone when the door back inside locks behind you.

“Yeah, old house, it does that,” says the stranger as Richard tries in vain to get the door open without pulling the whole doorknob off.

“God my, fucking phone charger was in there,” he lies. He could just go, just lay in the dark in his dorm room until sunrise, but it’s too much like running away, and he doesn’t run away he avoids which are two completely different concepts thank you very much. He gives up and he’s just standing there, idly pulling on his fingers and twisting his hands while staring at the opposite couch in the hopes that it’s sole, stone asleep occupant will suddenly get up and give him a place to pretend to pass out. They’re whispering, he’d recognize that voice anywhere, and it’s about him, he knows it’s about him, what the fuck else would they be talking about? He deliberately slows his breathing down and attempts to focus on something else, anything else. This isn’t his fucking problem okay? He isn’t in the wrong here, and even if he was he didn’t start anything, didn’t invite anyone over under false pretenses just to, to whatever. The stagnant mix of smoke permeating the air makes him feel ill. Crickets methodically chirp a melodious tune outside, just beyond the porch walls. Field crickets by the sound of them, late bloomers singing in vain who don’t know summer already ended.

“Later man,” says the stranger. The screen door opens and shuts behind him as he dares to turn around. Only said stranger and the sleeping figure behind him are left for him to see through the high curling smoke and barely permeable darkness.

The man he doesn’t know, the stranger, offers him a cigarette, but he declines and sits next to him for lack of anything better to do.

“I’m Richard,” he says.

“Ha, cool,” says the stranger. He can only tell he’s there by the whites of his dark eyes the shine of his teeth standing out in the far away lamplight.

“Did you, did you know that guy?” Richard asks, after a long enough silence that the sickly cigarette has been replaced by a pipe. He’s smoked weed before, but most of the time after he’s taken a hit he’s just irritated. His focus is shot and the average twitching is replaced by a staring gazing unfocused focus on whatever minutia can hold his attention for more than zero point five seconds at a time. It’s hell and a delay of activity he hates more than any infatuation or discrete obsession by far more than any distance man or machine could conceive.

“Yah,” says the stranger, through an easy exhale. “I’m Richard.”

“Are you kidding me?”

“Nah,” says, apparently, other Richard, offering him the bowl. “What are the odds?”

“Is that a serious question?”

“If you want,” he says. “Did you know that guy?”

“No,” he insists, and fuck it he might as well take a hit. It’s a shitty night and it might as well get worse. He still coughs like a novice every time, which other Richard thankfully says nothing about. “Not really.”

“I pegged you as a smoker, coming out for a midnight fix,” says other Richard.

“No, just can’t sleep.”

“I hear you,” he says. “I really come out here to see the stars.” Which he really doubts, but somehow they start talking about constellations and pulsars, even NASA, which leads to science fiction, something he himself has a low opinion of unless it has at least a loose basis in hard science, otherwise what is the point? Sci-fi meanders back into NASA and he starts to tune other Richard out, aka stoner Richard, when he goes on too long about Carl Sagan. The feeling of soft lips against his own is a surprise. The hand on his thigh afterwards, is significantly less of one.

“I have a girlfriend,” he blurts out, halfway on his back, because he does actually, for once.

“Good for you. I have a boyfriend,” says stoner Richard and he’s going to have to call him something besides his own name. This night is surreal enough without the weird added baggage of whatever that means. “You almost met him earlier.”

“Oh,” he says, because what can you really say to that? The hand at the juncture of his shoulder and neck stops moving.

“You can say no dude,” stoner Richard says, and suddenly Richard realizes he hasn’t moved at all, has barely reacted to any of his, his ministrations, besides stiffly holding himself still. For some reason it’s that thought, the thought that he just let this stranger kiss him in the dark, that finally unfreezes him, loosens his limbs and heats up his skin enough for him to reach some semblance of relaxation and movement. If it wasn’t for the darkness seeping in, he knows he’d look ugly, skin blotchy, flushed and pale all at once.

“Okay,” he says. “Yeah, I mean yes.”

He doesn’t think he likes himself very much.

-

Anticipation follows him all the way back from Hooli to the front door of the incubator. The soft flush of panic only fades when he realizes Jared isn’t here, that he can safely throw up in his own bathroom in peace without anyone hovering over him, whispering low soothing words or rubbing small circles into his back. Maybe Jared actually heeded his ill-intentioned advice and took the day off for personal reasons or even, god, fun. Any traitorous blessing in disguise is welcome at this point.

There’s music emanating from the backyard. Dinesh and Gilfoyle are there sitting in patio chairs, along with a few other people he doesn’t recognize, and of course Carla, because of course she is that’s just his luck.

“Hey Carla,” he says, looking everywhere but directly at her. There are beer bottles strewn about all around them, with the exception of a round, elaborate bong taking up a table all by itself, a bong he knows belongs to Erlich, and in Erlich’s room, not out here by the pool where, in Erlich’s words, any stray seagull could mistaken it for a sultry happy meal, making illicit promises of free delicious fries and a child’s tears. Never mind that they’re too far inland for that to ever happen, which Jared said more eloquently than he could at the time.

“Little early for a party guys,” he says tightly.

“We haven’t slept,” Dinesh says miserably.

“Can I talk to you guys? In private?” he adds, when neither Dinesh nor Gilfoyle move.

“What the fuck why is Carla here? Do you not remember her blackmailing us out twenty thousand dollars?” he whispers.

“You mean the money we owed her?” Gilfoyle says.

“You mean the money we needed?” Richard says back. “What, you think she won’t extort us again given another chance? If she happens to find out about anything we did that isn’t strictly legal?”

“Okay,” Gilfoyle concedes. “I see your point.”

“What about everyone else?” Dinesh asks.

“I don’t know, sure they can stay whatever,” he says. Gilfoyle narrows his eyes.

“Wait, so Carla can’t stay, but any number of people you’ve never met can come and go freely?” Gilfoyle says.

“I, I’ve met those guys,” he lies.

“Really? Name one,” Gilfoyle says.

“Look, we know what Carla’s capable of, but I’m trying to give them,” he says, gesturing at the motley group guaranteed to contain at least two hackers and one satanist. “The benefit of the doubt and not just bar anyone who’s not us from the premises.”

“It’s a flawed system-” Gilfoyle starts.

“Oh my god, I don’t care,” Dinesh whines. “Can we just kick them all out and go to sleep now please?”

“Fine,” Gilfoyle says, but Richard has a feeling this isn’t over yet. Fuck Monica for telling him she knew Carla, but like biblically.

“Where’s Jared?” he asks.

“Pay up,” Gilfoyle says to Dinesh, who sighs dramatically.

“I never agreed to that bet, this is extortion,” Dinesh insists.

“You could always not pay me. You and I both know-” Gilfoyle starts.

“Just shut the fuck up. Can it wait a second? Is it okay with your dark lord Stan? And yeah I said Stan on purpose,” Dinesh says.

“I don’t want to know anything about what you two are talking about right now, okay?” Richard says exasperated. “Just get them out of here.”

Gilfoyle gives him a final look before going off to herd all his guests out. Jared should be here, he never would have let this happen. He’s practically cool repellent, practically Carla repellent and he should either be here completely or not at all.

“Jared went to his condo late last night, saying he was taking the morning off to attend to personal business,” Dinesh says blearily.

“What kind of personal business?” he asks.

“Personal dude, I don’t know, I didn’t ask,” Dinesh says. “He’d probably just go into another horrifying anecdote about maybe being conscripted into being a child soldier or a drug mule, or something equally distressing.”

“So is no one going to work today? If Jared and I aren’t here for half a day, are things just going to fall apart?” he says. “Because I was under the impression we were running a company and not a frat house computer camp hybrid fuck up!”

“Relax Richard,” Gilfoyle says, and he brought Carla over, fuck. “We were working until almost sunrise last night, which means I completed a weeks worth of work compared to Dinesh’s barely competent full day’s worth.”

“Fuck you,” Dinesh yawns as they both go back inside, leaving Carla there staring at him for some ungodly reason.

“What?” he asks, irritated.

“Gilfoyle said you had a question for me,” she says.

“No? No, don’t think I did,” he says, looking at the air above her head and the empty space slightly to the right of her. Her hair’s a little longer than the last time he saw her.

“You look like shit,” she says.

“Well, I feel like shit,” he smiles tightly.

“You should work on that,” she says.

“I’m hungover, and I didn’t buy the red wine, that was Monica. I guess I could have just not had any but,” he says, before cutting himself off because oh fucking goddammit. This is why no one should tell him anything ever. He wasn’t made to keep other people’s secrets and even just one oblique reference is enough to make his stupid mouth ignore every sensible instinct he has.

“You and Monica, huh?” Carla says. Now she’s the one not looking at him, doing her best to pretend everything is fine, everything is normal before reverting back to her usual bored, but now sharper glare.

“What? No, god no. I mean. That’s not who I. I’m. I mean I. Fuck. Don’t. Um. I don’t,” he stutters. “It’s not relevant-”

“You’re not referring to me are you? This isn’t an attempt to set us up is it?” she says, looking physically ill, which he’s sure he’ll be offended about later, just as soon as he can get his foot out of his mouth and stop talking.

“No! No, and even if it was, I’m not exactly your type,” he says laughing nervously.

“What’s. My. Type,” she asks venomously and right now Richard is sure he’s in very real physical danger.

“Erm, I’m,” he says. “Gonna shut up now.”

“Relax, Richard,” Carla says, rolling her eyes. “My type,” she says, complete with finger quotes. “Isn’t exactly a secret.”

“Were you just fucking with me?” he says, heart beat slowing down to only a slightly faster than normal pace. He isn’t awake enough to deal with this or tired enough to not care.

“So who were you referring to when you were all, ‘Oh no that’s not who I’m. Uh, uh,’” she says, complete with an extremely unflattering an exaggerated impression of him nearly fainting.

He doesn’t trust himself enough to do more than bite his lip and glare.

“Now I’m fucking with you, Richard. Relax,” she says.

“Can we just pretend this conversation never happened?” he pleads. “With Jared off and Gilfoyle and Dinesh asleep, I have too much to do today already to keep-”

“Gladly,” she says. “How’s Monica?”

“I don’t know what you mean?”

“You saw her last night, you told me. I’m not stupid Richard. You two had a big gay heart to heart-” she starts.

“I’m not listening to this. This is slanderous-”

“And she told you we-”

“-libel. And please stop-”

“Used to fuck,” she finishes with unnecessary emphasis.

“Eurgh god, I don’t need to know this, I really don’t,” he pleads.

“You clearly already do man,” she shrugs.

“Can I just have some tiny bit, of plausible deniability, please? If it’s not too much trouble for you!”

“No,” she says flatly. “The second she told you, she practically told everyone you’ve ever met. Thank god I don’t work here anymore. Otherwise I’d have to deal with Jared,” she shudders.

“He means well Carla, he really does,” he says. Carla just gives him a look.

“With Erlich gone, all the heterosexuality in this place just went right out the window, huh?”

Instead of replying he goes to pick up Erlich’s bong and take it back inside, away from this completely unproductive conversation, just fucking extremely unproductive, full of lies and half truths that are no one’s goddamn business but his own.

“Wait, does Jian Yang still live here?” she asks.

“I don’t know, Carla! I haven’t seen him!” he doesn’t shout.

“Jeez, calm down,” she says. He goes inside and locks the sliding door behind him.

-

Jared doesn’t come back until after noon, and not even Gilfoyle and Dinesh have stirred yet. Fuck Carla. Richard’s still too awake, too actively noticing every little flaw in her conversation to relax and do more than the bare minimum amount of coding. He can see why Monica dumped her; she’s an absolute nightmare. Erlich’s ‘approved guests only’ policy held this place together, otherwise Gilfoyle would have let any fuck who can say ‘hail Satan’ in and Dinesh would be completely useless. He didn’t like the rule at the time, but they need structure to keep them from falling apart at the seams. Gilfoyle was right though, they did do a solid weeks worth of work in record time. Maybe Richard has the right idea, maybe everyone should sleep only every other day at most.

“Jared! Good you’re back,” he says when he hears the front door open. “Listen, we need to...”

“Yes, what is it Richard?” Jared says kindly, but he sounds different too, congested and his nose and cheeks are red, red from-

“Have you been crying?” he asks, freezing like a deer in headlights.

“Oh, I’m sorry. I thought the redness would have gone down by now. I don’t have access to my usual methods of hiding the inflammation in the car. I promise you Richard, it won’t interfere with work.”

“Stop. Stop. Sit down just,” he says as he stops and tries to think of what to do with a crying Jared. Under normal circumstances he could enact Gavin’s plan to be himself, be selfish and mean, and petty to the point of mutual destruction, but this isn’t normal, isn’t the baseline symbiotic relationship (or parasitic because who is he really kidding) they’ve fallen into, hasn’t been in months. He’s rarely been put in a position to console anyone, let alone Jared who’s standing there hesitating, halfway hiding his face behind his hands in an attempt to ward him off. The collar of Jared’s shirt is askew, and if he can’t even be bothered enough to notice his carefully curtailed appearance is slightly out of place, then he must need something or someone to help him, but Richard is definitely not that person.

“Do you want some tea?” Richard asks quietly, feeling like an idiot.

“Oh no, you don’t have to do that. I’m fine really, I’m behind on work already,” Jared insists, awkwardly shifting his weight.

“No, just sit down and don’t get up okay?” he sighs. “I’m going to make you some tea Jared,” he says as seriously as he can muster with wide, red-rimmed blue eyes staring at him.

“Okay,” Jared croaks out and Richard flees to the kitchen filled with the unmistakable memory of the last time he saw Jared cry, in that stupid jacket back at Hoolicon, angry, wrecked and beyond devastated. Nothing is going according to plan here, nothing at all. Jared hasn’t talked to him about his personal life in weeks, months even and even when he did he never knew how to react or what to do, other then nod with what he’s sure was a horrified look on his face as he desperately tried not to immediately change to subject. It isn’t his business anymore, if it ever was, and he’s sure if he hadn’t been awake for over thirty hours already, he’d feel differently, maybe sad or wistful, but certainly not this petulant anger. Both of the mugs he’s using, the blue one at least, certainly weren’t chipped when he got them out of the cabinet, but they are now.

“I didn’t know which tea you wanted so I made green and black,” he says carrying them out. Jared doesn’t seem to hear him at first. Instead he stares down at his feet, hands clasped and shoulders hunched. He listlessly blinks up at him before gazing off into the distance. He looks intolerably small, more pulled into himself than usual and Richard very deliberately and very carefully places each mug and a squeeze bottle of honey in front of him so as not to accidentally spill them or put them down with too much force. Jared chooses the blue mug made with the black tea in it, leaving the sickly yellow green tea for Richard. As Jared closes his eyes and takes the first sip, Richard unconsciously holds his breath, looking for any sign of disappointment, any slight movement or twitch to indicate that he did something wrong, that despite how much he wants to be enough, he’ll always be lacking. But there isn’t any of that, just the smallest, brief, warm smile and his throat working as he swallows. Richard can’t even tell the mug is damaged from the way Jared’s long fingers grasp it tightly.

“Your shirt is, here let me just,” Richard says, as he foolishly reaches over and really how could he be expected to not fix his collar when it isn’t supposed to be like this. Richard isn’t supposed to be the one helping, the one unthinkingly touching, he’s too clumsy against soft solid skin, too cruel and needy to quash the urge to take something from this, covet the memory he doesn’t deserve to posses.

“Now you’re,” he says, and it’s a supreme effort but he’s pulled away. “Now it’s perfect.”

Jared may have looked at him, may have noticed him touching and taking advantage, but Richard made sure to not look him in the eyes, not to risk finding out how little he must matter in Jared’s eyes now, how much he wishes Jared would either leave him or come back completely, just put him out of this static misery.

“I’m an idiot, I forgot to get a spoon,” he says to himself, but before he can get up Jared forces him back down with a single hand on his shoulder.

The warmth he’s sure he can feel through all three layers of clothing makes him feel powerless to leave, even if he was insane enough to actually want to.

“Thank you, Richard,” Jared says quietly, sipping his tea. The hand on his shoulder presses on him with the same absentminded force of before, clenching and unclenching, almost as if Jared has stopped communicating with the rest of his body entirely. Richard clears his throat, trying not to lean into it.

“Is this like the time you were crying while watching cute animal videos or um, something worse?” he says cringing.

“A little of both. I’m fine really, I promise,” he insists with the calm dignity of a nineteen forties Hollywood starlet, and Richard really wonders where he gets his poise in the face of indignity.

“I’m,” he stutters shuddering. The no longer idle hand gripping his shoulder relaxes into a slow movement upwards, fingers gently caressing the light hair on the back of his neck, fingertips dragging back down. It changes into something less like the light, circular and clinical (but all too intimate) touches he receives along his back when emptying his stomach into the nearest receptacle, and turns into a slower caress that’s quickly delving into a deep hard press he can scarcely stop himself from moaning at. He’s definitely a bad person for letting this continue, letting Jared practically massage him when he’s supposed to be the one comforting him, and again taking advantage of someone who might gladly continue if he asked, would probably go further if he doesn’t still hate him and that fucking terrifies him.

The thumb moves idly, nothing more then a soothing anchor letting the fingers of his really quite large hand press into muscles that have been cramped up since Richard sat down at his first computer.

“Glad you’re okay,” he gasps embarrassingly, and with that the spell is broken. Jared’s mouth opens and closes before he lightly withdraws his hand from it’s rightful place in the conquered, or more accurately surrendered, landscape of Richard’s body.

“If you need, if you need the rest of the day off,” Richard starts, but he can’t quite get his voice to stay in a single octave.

“No, I need to work, to focus on something I can dedicate myself to fully with,” Jared licks his lips, face still pink and flushed. “Immediate results.”

Richard stares at his mouth, still em shaped and delicate and still slightly open before standing up and away to clear away his tea like a coward.

“You should take off any mornings you need to, take as many personal days as you’d like, I insist,” he says, voice still not under control. He doesn’t look at Jared, only looks down and fiddles with the honey cap, intent on not dragging this out any further than absolutely necessary.

“Alright,” Jared says quietly, and Richard knows whatever it is he’s dealing with must be huge for him to sacrifice work, which in Jared’s world is practically a religion.

“Good. I need you- we need you to be, y’know, good or happy and- and happy,” he finishes lamely, resisting to urge to retrace the path of Jared’s hand which doesn’t look much bigger than is own from here, but he’s still staring at it and failing to avert his gaze even the slightest bit. The urge to touch him has welled up inside him all over again, and Richard almost thinks he can see Jared gripping his own thigh just the slightest bit, but he can’t be sure, not unless he gets closer which he can’t trust himself to do, can already smell him from where he’s standing which has never been a problem before but he got too close like an idiot and now he won’t be able to rid himself of it.

“Yes, thank you Richard,” Jared says, and Richard retreats into his room to work for the rest of the night, face warm and shoulder still burning.

-

He’d be lying if he said he hadn’t been thinking about Jared the entire night. He’d be lying again if he said he wasn’t still thinking about him the next sleepless morning. But after a day or more (he isn’t sure) of near unwavering focus, his head finally clears.

Richard isn’t a good person, never has been and everyone but Big Head has been smart enough to see the writing on the wall and leave. He never understood that phrase. Jared came back though, but that’s only temporary and he isn’t going to lie to him about who he is or pretend to be a better person. Gavin Belson’s suggestion of just being himself hasn’t had a chance to go into effect yet, but that isn’t his fault. It was unexpected to be hit with a crying Jared, a Jared who needed him to be there for once and not shrink away from him as soon as he could. He waited at least five minutes, fifteen minutes tops before he ran away, he thinks giggling.

“He’s laughing again,” he hears Dinesh stage whisper to Gilfoyle.

“Are you feeling okay Dinesh?” Richard asks.

“Uh yeah Richard, I’m fine.”

“Because I was wondering how that is any of your fucking business,” he says.

“Okay, I’m out. Call me when Robin Williams here finally gets some sleep, or somebody finally shoots him,” Dinesh says. “Y’know, from that movie Insomnia? It had Robin Williams in it.”

“Al Pacino was the one with insomnia, you Pakistani Kardashian,” Gilfoyle says.

“Wow, and even after that, you’re somehow still not the biggest asshole in this room right now,” Dinesh says.

“You could always leave,” Gilfoyle says.

“Also which Kardashian? Wait, you know what? Fuck this, I’m out.”

Being himself works well enough to piss off Dinesh, but Dinesh is easy to piss off, it wasn’t truly his doing if not for Gilfoyle with the assist. Gilfoyle must sense him staring because he’s staring right back, a shrewd look in his eyes.

“Where’s Jared?” Gilfoyle asks.

“Why do you care?” he says, but Gilfoyle just keeps staring, like a goat but somehow creepier, or maybe a less creepy elf on the shelf. He never understood those either.

“Personal day,” Richard says. “He’s got things going on. He’ll be gone all morning.”

“And how are you Richard?” Gilfoyle asks.

“Me? Perfectly fine. Don’t I look fine?” he says. “Sure, I’ve had a headache since Monica decided to buy red wine for our little ‘how are you doing sibling bonding’ talk or whatever the fuck that’s called, and I haven’t slept in, oh I don’t know how long but I’m fine Gilfoyle, for the first time in a long time I’m actually fine! I can stop thinking whenever I want to, can just tune it out and not worry about a fucking thing for hours at time! Sure, my heart’s working double over time and my joints hurt all the time and I lose my train of thought every now again, but I can stop thinking about whoever I want, whenever I want and stop obsessing! Have you ever been awake for more than two days Gilfoyle? Because after day three everything is just smoothing sailing.”

Instead of replying, Gilfoyle, eyebrows trying to escape into the stratosphere, simply nods and get his phone out.

“What are you doing? Who are you texting?” Richard asks.

“Would you say Dinesh is a Khloe or a Kourtney?” Gilfoyle asks.

“...what about that guy who is just there all the time?”

“Good instinct,” Gilfoyle says, but Richard doesn’t know who he even means.

-

Monica stops by an indeterminate amount of time later, but she must have been here longer than he thought because one minute it’s just him and Gilfoyle, but the next time he looks up she’s saying something to him, but he can’t quite parse it.

“How long have you been awake?” she asks, sitting in a chair directly across from him, a chair he remembers being further away.

“Since before we had drinks,” he says, attention span evaporating. “That’s Jared’s chair.”

“Richard, you need to sleep,” she says. “Right now. You can’t keep doing this to yourself.”

“No, I definitely can,” he says. “Why are you here?” he asks, and suddenly he makes a connection in his mind as he slowly turns to face Gilfoyle.

“You called her? What the fuck Gilfoyle?”

“As much as I enjoy your obvious distress, you’re making my life, and less importantly everyone else’s life more difficult with every passing day,” Gilfoyle says. “Now stop being a selfish asshole and go the fuck to sleep.”

“I’m selfish?” he says, standing up. He vaguely realizes it takes too much effort to control the volume of his voice, but the nice thing about not sleeping is you don’t care very much about anything. “What have you done since Erlich left? Besides break the rules and steal his stuff?”

“Erlich’s gone Richard,” Gilfoyle says. “And if he was going to come back, he’d have come back by now.”

“You have to clean it,” he says.

“What?” Gilfoyle asks.

“The bong, the round one. You have to clean it or all the little parts inside will break,” he says, remembering when he came home once to find Jared slightly stoned.

He looked so sad and forlorn, refusing to move off the couch for fear of ‘Knocking everything over. I’m too tall Richard, I’m sorry, I’m not trying to be.’ And Richard was so tired, just so dead inside, still too fresh from being fired from his own company, the first time, that he just sat with him until it passed. Jared told him about how Erlich said to clear the smoke out of the bong, the same round one, or it would get damaged, about how afterwards he had just gingerly set it down on the table so he wouldn’t break it in his foggy state. Foggy, Jared had specifically said foggy. Richard just nodded or made noncommittal noises every now again, barely doing anything besides feeling sorry for himself. Once Jared locked himself in the bathroom, not right then, not that night but when he was younger, much younger. He accidentally broke something, Richard can’t remember what Jared told him it was, but it was enough for him to need a door between him and whoever he was staying with at the time.

“Okay Richard,” Monica says slowly. “We’ll clean the bong and put it right back where Erlich wants it, or better yet we’ll lock it in his room and give you the key. Is that okay?”

“Yeah,” he says, distracted. “It’s um, it’s over there. By Gilfoyle. Can you get it? I don’t trust him with it.”

“Okay,” says Monica, and her frustration is starting to show. “But then you’re going to go to sleep.”

He nods. He has to time this just right if he’s going to pull it off. Monica turns her back, and as soon as she has the bong in her hands, he grabs his laptop and bolts, just narrowly avoiding falling on his ass before successfully locking his bedroom door behind him.

The most immediate problem is, he forgot his power cord. Anything else, such as the loud knocking on the door from Monica or the incoming phone call from Gilfoyle, is frankly of least concern.

“You’re going to have to sleep sometime Richard,” Monica shouts through the door. “I have to get back to Bream-Hall but I’m coming back later.”

“Yeah? Well I wouldn’t want you to inconvenience yourself,” he yells back at the sound of heels on hardwood clicking further and further away.

His bed is on the floor, which he didn’t do, doesn’t remember doing, but whatever he can work around it, plug in and code to his heart’s content. But listening to music is too much, he hasn’t been able to in days now. The work is slow going, but he doesn’t have any of those assholes bothering him, doesn’t have anything he doesn’t want and it’s enough, it has to be enough.

“Richard?” he hears, muffled from the other side.

“Jared? I told you to take the morning off.”

“It isn’t morning anymore Richard,” Jared says. “It’s well past noon, but if you-”

“You put my mattress back on the floor,” he says.

“Yes. I noticed you were,” Jared starts to say, but whatever else he was going to say dies on his (what Richard imagines to be) soft lips when Richard opens the door without preamble.

“Jesus dude,” says Dinesh from where Richard can see him behind Jared’s shifting figure as Jared carefully steps inside. “It’s been fucking hours, but of course the second Jared says anything-”

“Fuck off Dinesh,” he says grinning as he slams the door in his face. It’s immensely satisfying.

“When was the last time you slept?” Jared asks.

“When you last made me sleep.”

“Oh.”

“You can sit down,” Richard says as he sits on the floor himself. Jared takes the chair, sitting stiff and prim like a nervous girl at her first cotillion. Jared hardly moves, hardly even dares to do more than look at him sadly, face drained of energy and color. He really has to stop comparing Jared to women in his head. Maybe it’s a last ditch denial he came up with and forgot about; it isn’t working.

“Why are you doing this to yourself?” Jared asks.

“Do you remember when you, you got high by accident?”

“You’ll have to be more specific,” Jared says far too placidly.

“Here, when you were here, in the house,” he says, and instead of reaching out he rocks himself back and forth once, frustration building and ebbing. “Erlich asked you to clear his bong or something and. When I got home you were sitting alone on the couch.”

“I remember. My body is extremely sensitive when it comes to any sort of chemical,” he says. “Oh don’t worry, it’s saved my life on more than one occasion.”

“Jared,” he whines dragging the sound out. “You were so sad and you didn’t know how to stop.”

He remembers how steady Jared’s hand was despite how distressed he was, how warm it was between both of his own. They fell asleep on the couch together, Jared’s hand in his and body curled around him. He woke up the next morning by himself, a blanket draped over him. How could he have forgotten that for so long, forgotten the shape of the warmth against his back, along his waist, and the length of his arm?

Jared looks away from him and at the bed, and if that’s what he wants he’ll do it, so he takes his shoes off and gets under the covers. He lies on his side, facing Jared, who’s literally tucking in blankets around him, but smiling so very sadly. Maybe he can care more now like this and be less himself, can offer some comfort, the comfort he couldn’t give before, maybe that’s what makes him grab Jared by the hand and gently squeeze. But whatever makes Jared stay is a mystery.

“Would you like to know how I’ve been spending my mornings?” Jared asks calmly, watching Richard shakily and slowly rub uneven circles onto different parts of his hand, first on the palm and then turning it over to web of his thumb.

“Yes,” he sighs.

“My friend Gloria is dying. It isn’t unexpected,” Jared states, head tilted, eyes shining. “Her memory works better early in the day.”

Richard squeezes tighter, breath shuddering and mind greedily relieved. He thought, he thought it would be something worse, something less natural and more tragic. It’s an awful thought to only be minorly sad at the idea of an elderly woman he never met dying, but the best possible outcome of a bad situation is better than more pain. It has to be right? Even now, he’s too selfish to be upset, to stop wondering through tightly shut eyes what it would be like to feel Jared’s hands touching him without clothes in the way, to imagine what he looks like on his back, flushed from the roots of his hair and all the way down the length of his body, what he tastes like, and worst of all, how it would feel to be wanted like that again and for Jared to actually do something about it this time.

“She’s the only person I know who remembers my mother,” Jared says.

The comfort of normalcy, of Jared just causally stating tragedy like a comment on the weather is a familiar balm on his guilty soul, a taste of honey, of what life was like before he threw him away and god isn’t that fucked up?

“This morning, I even heard a story about her I’d never heard before, but it did take place at the end of World War II, well before my mother was born, so I think she may have mixed up a few things.”

Consoling people just by existing near them is the best he can do. He knows what it’s like to only have a patchwork ghost of someone, made of truth and lies, both idealized (according to his father) and reviled (according to his brother) beyond what any real person could possibly match. He wants to help, but even surrendered on his side, he’s still too much of a coward. Instead he says,

“I never knew my mom either.”

It’s the hand on his face that opens his eyes, a thumb wiping away a sleep tired tear.

“I’ve missed you,” Richard says into a face with eyes so blue and kind he would do anything he asked of him, give himself wholly over if he wasn’t so afraid.

“I’m here, I’ve been here the whole time,” Jared says softly, caressing the side of face, pushing back his hair. Richard leans in.

“You haven’t,” he insists accusingly. “Not for a while, for a long time.”

Jared bends down and leaves a kiss on his forehead like a benediction, and he must surely be hallucinating at this point.

“Go to sleep,” Jared says, so he does.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Various people try to help in their own way, maybe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay, been having absolutely massive mood swings lately and I have to find a new therapist so that's... certainly a thing. This chapters been beta'd but I don't have to energy to look over it so there may be one of two stray errors. Enjoy

Last night, a healthy eight pound baby was born, named Alexandra Emily Hendricks. Richard had predictably, been awake for far too long to appreciate the event, and then far too deep asleep to be aware of it. At seven in the morning, he wakes up alone and empty, barely getting out of bed for anything more than his most basic needs, which still take a supreme effort to accomplish. After dragging his laptop over, he listlessly works, ignoring the pain in his mind, in his overworked body. Ellis called and left a message, but he didn’t ask to see him, didn’t even ask for him to visit anymore. At least something in his life is finally going his way.

Big Head knocking on his door is a surprise.

“Don’t you have class?” Richard asks, not bothering to get up.

“Not everyday,” Big Head shrugs. “Jared asked me to check on you while he was out.”

“Of course he did,” Richard mumbles.

“I brought you a sandwich. The cafeteria is pretty good,” Big Head says. “Are you okay? I haven’t seen you like this since. Um.”

“Since what?”

“Since you... broke up with that guy back in college,” Big Head says slowly.

“I wasn’t! I wasn’t dating any guys in college Big Head, okay?” he sputters indignantly. “I think I would notice if I was! You met both my girlfriends! And it wasn’t, it wasn’t because of him.”

Never mind that he knows exactly who Big Head is talking about, probably. Okay, maybe down to one or two people. If it’s freshman year, it’s definitely Jonathan and one or two orgasms do not make a regular relationship thing. If it’s junior year (which it probably is) than it’s stoner Richard, who’s name wasn’t actually Richard but Delshone and he was just fucking with him when they met. And they both agreed that they were only fucking around occasionally and there was no relationship to speak of because he didn’t even like him that much in the first place.

“It was because of Stanford. It wasn’t,” he says, struggling to find the words. “Good. It wasn’t perfect and I wasn’t- I may have made some bad decisions toward the end, but it just wasn’t a good place for me. At the time.”

“Oh,” Big Head says.

“How long have you been thinking I,” Richard says, calmer but not at all close to calm, more like a hurricane that’s moved slightly to the left. “Why would you make jokes about my laptop being my girlfriend if.” He makes a garbled, distressed noise instead of finishing that thought.

“I mean, I wasn’t like, that great back then? I dunno. You having, er, or not having a boy, um,” Big Head says. “I didn’t really know how to handle it? It used to make me uncomfortable so I never brought it up. I was a little immature back then I guess. Kind of a jerk.”

Big Head sips his big gulp loudly, obnoxiously, in the ensuing silence. “About you having a boyfriend and all.”

“God, I get it okay?” he says, pillow over his own face in the vain hope of somehow smothering himself unconscious.

“Sorry.”

“He wasn’t my boyfriend, I was…” he says the next part so quietly he knows Big Head won’t hear it, hopes he’ll just let it go, let him live in the peace of his denial for just a little while longer.

“You were what?”

“I was,” he swallows, eyes still covered. “I don’t know the exact phrase for the situation when its two uh, but, the other woman.”

“Okay,” Big Head says, like it’s no big deal. “I’m not sure why I need to know exactly what you two were doing?”

“What?” he says, fully abandoning the pillow and sitting up which was not a good idea because he can feel his face turn what must be the brightest shade of red known to man once he connects the dots. “Jesus, no not like, sex stuff! He already had a boyfriend, okay? I knew. I knew, and.”

“Oh, okay. Sorry man,” he says.

“It was, there was nothing below my waist, I mean his waist, or nothing involving, parts or, or not parts, or, so, I’m not, I’m not. I’m not doing this. I’m not having this conversation.”

“Okay,” Big Head says, and god he has to be heavily medicated to take in every single word Richard’s been sputtering at him and not bat an eye.

Maybe Big Head’s attitude when they were growing up, the same attitude that thought Nip Alert was a good idea, started as solidarity. Big Head was definitely uncomfortable around jocks in high school, but he wasn’t bullied really. He just kind of looked at anyone who taunted him with deep confusion and didn’t fight back at all, which was usually met with him being left alone. Richard wasn’t so lucky, couldn’t stand it when anyone even so much as implied something slightly untrue about him, just absolutely, patently, categorically untrue.

He went home more than once with a bruise or two from bullies, assholes who didn’t like him talking back, but no one was there often enough to care. By then it was just him in the house, his mom off with her new family, not that she was allowed to see him or actually had any parental rights being his stepmom and all, and his dad was just elsewhere. Maybe being alone through most of high school, excluding Big Head, is the reason why he’s so needy, so weak to any sort of kind word or compliment or scrap of affection thrown his way.

“Are you hungry?” Big Head asks.

“No,” he lies.

“Okay, but I’ll have to tell Jared you didn’t eat.”

Part of him preens at the idea of being at the center of Jared’s concern again instead of being pawned off to Big Head, and god was he always this obvious? But mostly he doesn’t want to face him just yet. There’s no room for denial anymore and no refuge in mental confusion, if there ever even was. He can’t lie to himself anymore, he doesn’t have the energy.

“Give me the sandwich,” he says, relenting.

“Jared said to remind you that you two have a meeting with a Ron LaFlamme today.”

“Of course I do,” he sighs. “Yeah, yeah alright.”

-

Jared drives, face the usual pale and not the distressed washed out shade from when Richard made him tea, eyes not over tinged from crying this time. His visit with Gloria must have been a good one, or maybe it wasn’t, maybe she was asleep or her family was there and Jared wasn’t allowed to see her, or anything really. All he knows is Jared hasn’t been crying so he doesn’t have to try and not look at him as the redness fades from his eyes, ears, and the tip of his nose. Richard ignores the silence and stares out the window, trying to remember why they’re visiting Ron LaFlamme in the first place. But he doesn’t ask, because if he asks then he’s asking for something _from_ Jared and that isn’t what he does anymore, he’s decided, because it’s absolute agony every time and when has asking ever gone his way lately? When has his selfishness helped anyone? He never thought Jared would look so distant, so solid and calm but so far out of reach.

“Richard,” Jared starts, eyes on the road. “There has been some concern in the workplace about your health.”

“Mm,” he says.

“And even though it’s beyond the scope of my position in the company, I have decided to, ah, oh dear how do I put this?”

“However you want,” he says listlessly, but he’s curious.

“From now on, I’m not going to sleep until you sleep,” he says firmly.

Richard almost wants to laugh. Is this it? Have all his sleepless nights of torturing himself and trying not to torture himself accidentally caused Jared to yield? To come back and start over mothering him with hyperbolic praise, adoring looks, and packed lunches out of sheer fucking pity? The hint of utter devotion he can practically feel in the air tastes sour in his mouth, or maybe that’s just his lunch trying to escape his throat, but god he still wants it, even if it hurts.

“You may not, you may not care about yourself right now Richard, and it isn’t any of my business why, but you aren’t just hurting yourself,” Jared says, voice tentative and hesitant. Richard holds his breath.

“You’re hurting the company and you’re,” Jared says. “You’re hurting your friends.”

He waits for Jared to say something, anything more but nothing comes. His friends? Fuck his friends. The company? Fuck the company.

“That indent on your chest, it’s called a pectus, pectus excavatum,” Richard says calmly, no energy behind his words because technically he just asked Jared for something without even thinking about it. He already broke his promise to not ask for anything anymore, but who does he really have to blame but himself?

“Y-yes?” Jared asks.

“Do you have any health problems associated with it? Any heart or lung problems?” he asks, and Jared actually takes his eyes off the road long enough to shoot him a bewildered glance.

“No,” he says thickly.

“Good,” Richard says.

-

The smilodon skull once stationed at the corner of Ron LaFlamme’s desk is gone. Most people, including Ron himself, called it a saber tooth tiger which, no, they actually weren’t all that closely related to tigers at all, but fine whatever. It’s not like the décor doesn’t subtly change all the time; Ron’s a hip guy, probably. A gift he said, most likely from the La Brea tar pits, but he didn’t even notice one of the teeth were fake, or at least he didn’t say it, too focused on keeping up appearances to realize he has a partial forgery right in front of him. And people think Richard’s in denial.

“Leave him with me mi amigo,” Ron says apropos of nothing and sure enough Jared leaves the meeting Richard wasn’t paying attention to anyway.

“Sorry what? What’s happening?” Richard asks.

Ron says nothing at first, just calmly and coolly gets out one of his guitars, a gaudy one.

“Now, you and I both know your heart isn’t in this today. What’s going on Richie?” Ron asks, idly strumming something that sounds like, ugh, light soft rock while his hair somehow, against all odds, doesn't fall into his face.

Oh nothing, he thinks. Just realizing I’m way gayer than I thought I was.

“I think I’m just, burnt out I guess,” he lies, or maybe not.

“Richie, I want you to look around my office and tell me what you see.”

“Um, guitars? Large windows? You have a lot of bracelets on,” he says. “Paintings?”

“Hobbies, other things to take up my time besides the law. Do you think I’d be half as good of a lawyer as I am if I spent all my time reading law books and studying cases? Can you imagine?” he laughs.

“Um, I mean yeah you’re, that’s literally your job,” he says.

“Whoa, no need to get hostile, and that isn’t legal-ese in this case,” Ron says. “The point is, sometimes Richie, you have to go with the flow and stop letting yourself get bogged down with endless details. Enjoy yourself. Otherwise, you won’t have the energy to pay attention when you really need to.”

“Shouldn’t a lawyer be the person most concerned with endless details?”

Ron just looks at him like a teacher indulging his favorite, but extremely stupid student.

“Go with the flow,” he whispers.

-

“So,” Dinesh starts. “Instead of our CEO not sleeping and fucking up the entire company, we have our CEO and our CFO not sleeping and fucking up the entire company. Sounds like a fool proof plan to me, if you two weren’t total fucking morons.”

“Dinesh is right,” Gilfoyle says. “And me saying that means this is bad enough that I don’t care that I’m agreeing with Dinesh.”

“Thank you,” Dinesh says.

“Oh, I just remembered I have to make an important phone call,” Jared says before fleeing to the garage.

“God, he’s transparent,” Dinesh says.

“It’s not that bad,” Richard says. “Just give me a few days to-”

“In a few days, you won’t know basic from binary,” Gilfoyle says. “We already have one Dinesh, we don’t need two.”

“We’re on the same side,” Dinesh says indignantly. “And at least I know to spell check tattoos before-”

“Did anyone, come by or leave any messages or anything while we were gone?” Richard asks.

“Who are expecting?” Gilfoyle says.

“No one,” he says. “It doesn’t matter.”

-

Dinesh and Gilfoyle are asleep or wherever and the neighborhood is quiet, silent and unbothered. It’s been barely twenty hours since Richard woke up and he already feels like sleeping for a month. What is he really doing now is the question, besides aimlessly walking through a dark house. The TV is on in the den, and he does have a reason for not going in there but, maybe it’s never been a very good reason.

“What are you doing up?” Richard asks Jared, sharply contrasted in the gray television light, before he remembers. “Oh right, stupid question.”

“No, no. I was going to check on you soon anyway,” Jared says brightly.

With nothing more to say, Richard shifts in the doorway while Jared looks back and forth between him and the TV. Cozy, it’s a cozy scene, if washed out by the screen being the only light. He has the urge to give him another blanket and not bother him again. He could go back to his room, he could sleep. He could amble around the neighborhood until sunrise. He could code into the night and meet the morning bleary eyed and forgetful. He could sit down with Jared and get that other blanket and imagine what it would be like to bundle up next to him and tell Jared everything he doesn’t know about him, could gently kiss the underside of his jaw and get lost in the sensation of shared body heat, in his warm scent as he lets himself be stripped completely bare. He doesn’t do any of these things.

“Do-” Jared starts.

“What are you watching?” Richard asks.

“Oh, it’s an old film. A romance based on a play,” Jared says. A British woman onscreen narrates her daily errands in black and white.

“Is it over?”

“No, not yet,” Jared says. “You could join me if you like.”

Rather than reply, he sits down in the space furthest away and pulls his knees up as the movie drones on and on. It’s the absolute least he could do so fuck it, he might as well just go with the flow. He’s rewarded with a warm smile and a warm feeling in the pit of his stomach. Is this what it was like for Monica every time she had to see Carla? But no, he reminds himself, he and Jared have never actually, are just. Anyway, Monica never came back after saying she would, and who could blame her, so it doesn’t matter anyway, just another unimportant detail.

“I thought you’d be in your condo tonight,” Richard says.

“I thought it would be a nice change to sleep in the garage again,” Jared says, which is code for he needs to keep an eye on Richard. “The amount of leg room I have in my condo makes me feel practically spoiled.”

“How are you going to,” he starts, and he doesn’t think he has any right to ask but he can’t help himself anymore. “How are you going to remember Gloria if you won’t sleep?”

“I’ve been recording our conversations on my phone,” Jared says.

“Oh.”

“It’s better this way,” he says, wistful and not looking at Richard. “Later, I’ll be able to hear from her whenever I like.”

It’s one of the sadder things he’s heard him say, if only because of the endlessness of it, the circular continuation of re-listened to, rehashed despair, predicated by Richard not being able to just stop himself from halfway self-destructing every single night. In the middle of his murky imaginings of what it would be like to be able to listen to a dead friend tell mostly true stories about the mother he never met, he realizes a selfish part of him is jealous. His hands clench and unclench to resist reaching out; he’d be doing it for the wrong reasons, he thinks, or maybe not. Would it be for himself or for Jared? The woman onscreen goes on about buying a clock, and however heavy handed, he supposes this is his cue to get out.

“You should create backups, a few backups and not all just here, or they’ll probably just, y’know, get set on fire or, or eaten by rats,” he says stammering. “We may be Pied Piper but we do definitely have a rat problem.”

“Thank you Richard, I will,” Jared says before Richard retreats.

-

Early the next morning, the lately elusive Jian Yang makes an appearance in the kitchen. If it wasn’t for Jared knocking on his door to make sure he didn’t need to use the shower, Richard would have coded through lunch and never would have known he was here.

“Something’s been bothering me lately,” Richard says, still in yesterday's clothes. Jian Yang looks at him with clear disinterest.

“This may sound a little weird, and I know we never talk really, or often, or ever, no I think we have? But, anyway. Gilfoyle said, er. Have you, have you been avoiding me?”

“Why would I avoid you?” Jian Yang asks.

“I didn’t, I didn’t really think about that. Uh,” he says. Good question. Fucking Gilfoyle.

Thankfully, he’s interrupted by Carla before he can make anything worse. Wait, no not-

“Hey Richard,” she says, tiredly.

“Who let you in?” he asks calmly, definitely calmly.

“O.J.,” she says. “And relax before you have an aneurysm. I’m here on business.”

“What possible business-”

“Erlich’s fine,” she says.

“Yeah, probably!” he says. “So?”

“He’s somewhere in China, though he isn’t quite sure how he got there from Tibet. Making business connections or whatever. I wasn’t really paying attention.”

“Okay, so, what are you saying?”

“You’re not an idiot, Richard. Monica,” she pauses. “Procured my services so you’d finally calm down. Though that’s a pipe dream.”

“I’m calm! I’m always calm!” he pauses to get his volume back under control. “How do I know you’re not lying?”

“You don’t. And you,” Carla says, looking at Jian Yang. “Erlich asked me to say something incredibly stupid to you, but I don’t care. Monica can do that, I’m out.”

“Good,” Jian Yang says.

“Oh,” Jared says, and how long has he been standing there? “I’m so glad you and Monica have finally buried the hatchet and become friends!”

“Fuck off O.J.,” Carla says, middle finger included, before leaving.

“Looks like my plan worked!” Jared says brightly. “It may have taken longer than expected, but a watched pot never boils.”

He doesn't have the heart to tell him that a watched pot does boil, and it’s bury the hatchet, not break the hatchet and no, his plan really, really didn’t.

-

“...I still say we drug them,” Dinesh says.

“If we were to drug Jared, he’d pass out in two seconds,” Gilfoyle says.

“Yeah, and he’d probably hurt himself by hitting his head on the counter and spilling his brains everywhere,” he says. “And I’m not cleaning up blood.”

“If we were to drug anyone, it would have to be Richard.”

“Fine then. Let’s drug Richard.”

“Alright,” Gilfoyle says. “What do you plan on using?”

“Oh, I was thinking some St. John’s Wort or maybe a lullaby. What the fuck do you think we’re using? Just whatever you have on hand.”

“I’ll consider it, if the price is right.”

“The price? What are you saving up for, a solid gold statue of your misspelled leader Stan?”

“The money means nothing to me.”

“You want things to go back to normal as much as I do!” Dinesh says. “Richard’s running himself and this company into the ground and Jared-”

“Every second you don’t make an offer the price goes up.”

“I don’t even know what I’m buying!”

“Hey, uh guys?” Richard says. “Don’t drug Jared.”

“...shit,” says Gilfoyle.

“Are we sure he’s only been awake for a day and a half? Because that was… not what I expected,” Dinesh says.

“This may be worse than we thought.”

-

Three days on and his ability to care has been leeched away and replaced with a familiar, sluggish calm, a deprivation oasis. Monica’s absence doesn’t bother him and neither do Carla’s definite probable lies or his brother’s absolute silence. If he could stay in this state indefinitely he would, but it’s all downhill from here so he might as well enjoy the descent while he can. Pretty soon, he’ll start making mistakes, not noticing minute errors or when Dinesh clumsily tries to trick him into consuming a laced drink, and, speaking of which.

“Hey Richard?” Dinesh says. “You look a little tired there, buddy. Want me to grab you an energy drink?”

“The last time you ‘grabbed me an energy drink,’ it was already open and most likely drugged so no, I’m good,” Richard says.

There is one thing that bothers him, and it’s no fucking surprise that it’s the dark circles under Jared’s eyes that occupy his mind more than his new niece or Erlich’s possible whereabouts. But he’s easily distractable lately, his object permanence is shot. If he turns his chair just so and if he doesn’t glance to his right, then he can’t see Jared, occasionally smiling and at other times looking off into space as if deep in thought, or perhaps lost in his own heavy fatigue.

“What? It was open? I must have done it without thinking, y’know, just so focused on working,” Dinesh says. “Besides, if it was drugged, which is crazy, you would have noticed and you feel perfectly fine now right?”

“Actually, I threw it away,” he says proudly.

“What? You did? God, that’s… so... weird.”

“Is it,” Gilfoyle says.

“Yeah, Gilfoyle, it is,” Dinesh says tightly.

“Hey Jared,” Gilfoyle says. “Do you think it’s weird to throw away an open drink?”

“It would depend on the circumstances,” Jared says.

“Gut instinct.”

“Well, if it was out of character I suppose I would,” Jared says. “I am allergic to both ambien and GHB.”

“Okay, that’s it!” Richard says, standing up. “You’re not drugging Jared.”

“Why would I drug Jared?” Dinesh says, and he seems like he’s being honest this time, seems being the key word. “If you sleep, he sleeps. Drugging him is just... inefficient.”

“You’ve never cared about efficiency before. Why start now?” Gilfoyle says.

“I’m not the bad guy here!” Dinesh says.

“If it would help I could send Dinesh a list of all my allergies,” Jared says.

“No!” Richard says, readjusting his volume when he notices Jared’s flinch. “I mean, that’s probably a good idea? But it doesn’t matter because no one’s drugging Jared. No one’s drugging anybody.”

“What the fuck is your problem?” Dinesh asks Gilfoyle.

“And sent!” Jared says. “Richard, I’m touched that you’d so quickly rush to my defense. I feel like a, hmm. I can’t come up with a proper simile right now. But safe? Protected.”

“Richard,” Gilfoyle says. “If you want to make sure no one drugs Jared, you should check his drinks.”

“Y’know what?” Richard says. “I think I will. Thank you Gilfoyle.”

“Am I in another fucking dimension? What the fuck is going on?” Dinesh says.

“Do you uh, want anything Jared? Tea? A glass of water? Anything at all?” Richard says, glaring at Dinesh who throws up his hands in surrender.

“Oh no thank you, I’ve had far too much caffeine today already,” Jared says.

“Okay, water then,” Richard says, not waiting for a reply.

It’s while he’s in the kitchen rinsing out a glass (just in case this whole argument is an elaborate plot to get him to use this glass in particular, which is stupid now that he thinks about it) that Gilfoyle walks in.

“That’s the third time Dinesh has tried that on me,” Richard says. “You think he’d give up by now.”

“Fourth actually. You spilled one all over yourself and had to change,” Gilfoyle says.

“Oh,” he says. “Can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Why are helping me?”

“You mean why am I torturing Dinesh?” Gilfoyle asks.

“Okay, good point,” he concedes, but Gilfoyle is still acting out of character and it has to be a means to an end, there has to be a reason for it. But maybe he should start accepting change, the changes in his life, in the people around him, even in himself after all these years.

“Do you trust Carla?” Richard blurts out.

“You’re asking me if I trust someone?” Gilfoyle asks.

“Right, sorry. Stupid question.”

“People don’t change Richard. Unless they want to, and sometimes not even then,” Gilfoyle pauses and looks as though he’s considering his next words carefully. But he must decide against whatever it was he was going to say because he leaves the room without another word.

But people can change, they do change, everyone around him is changing, coming and going whether he likes it or not. But maybe he’s wrong, maybe he just never noticed and was completely wrong about everyone from the very start. Erlich was always going to get bored and leave. Monica was always going to get tired of him. Ellis was always going to try again. Jared, who’s currently cheerfully discussing his various allergies with Dinesh, was always going to stay.

“You’re allergic to birch wood? Like not the pollen but the wood?” Dinesh asks.

“That one’s not so bad, it rarely comes up,” Jared says. “Aside from an unfortunate incident involving an unvarnished desk.”

Jared doesn’t look as bad as he did at TechCrunch; the exhaustion hasn’t settled in deeply enough to keep him from carefully styling his dark hair or diminish his reasoning, or diminish anything about the deep, warm, fearful, happiness Richard finally gave up on ignoring. He looks better in blue; it compliments his eyes and brings the whole of him into vivid clarity.

“I um, got you water,” Richard says. He goes to put it down on Jared’s right, but quickly changes his mind and moves the glass farther away from Dinesh. Dinesh rolls his eyes.

“Thank you Richard,” Jared says looking up at him.

“How’s Gloria?” Richard asks.

“Good, I think? It’s hard to tell right now,” Jared says, brows furrowed. “Details are more difficult to remember after being awake for three days, which can be a blessing in disguise under different circumstances.”

The navy blue sweater vest under his hand is softer than he thought is would be. The collar sticks up a bit, but he thinks it’s supposed to, so he doesn’t touch it. Jared places his hand over Richard’s and smiles up at him. It’s momentarily hard for Richard to remember why he did that beyond a vague sense that Jared needed him to and that’s reason enough he thinks.

“How many recordings do you have?” Richard asks.

“Oh, let me show you,” Jared says, and Richard regrets asking him because it means Jared isn’t looking at him anymore.

His knees ache and he needs to sit down, but he shifts so he’s leaning over and can get a good look at the computer, but that was a mistake. Not because his body is protesting the endless stress put upon himself, but because his chest feels tight from the smell of Jared’s hair, clean and deep and warm, but two of those don’t even make sense as a way to describe a scent but he’s sure, he’s absolutely positive he’s not wrong.

In the middle of Jared explaining the various recordings, Richard’s hand slips and he has to catch himself by holding onto him from behind, his mouth grazing the shell of his ear on the way down. Face red and buried in Jared’s neck, he starts giggling and pretty soon they’re both laughing. Dinesh and Gilfoyle are nowhere to be seen. As Richard fully pushes himself up and off, he giggles again and apologizes.

Maybe he was wrong the whole time, he thinks absently licking the barest trace of Jared’s sweat off his lips. He just has to completely immerse himself and soon he’ll be fine. He just has to get used to the pain.

-

Later at around sunset, after a day of no more energy drinks and no more caffeine, Richard finally decides it’s time.

“Jared, I’m going to sleep now,” he announces.

“Okay,” Jared smiles sleepily. After closing his computer, he leads Richard by the hand to Richard’s bedroom.

“I left your mattress on the floor,” Jared says, absently sitting at the end of the bed.

“Scoot over,” Richard says, before plopping down beside him and taking off his shoes.

The time for other decisions will come later, after he wakes up, but the dreamy dazed look Jared levels at him makes him feel braver than he should and more than a little bit stupid.

“Are you going make sure I sleep?” Richard asks.

“I think so,” Jared says, slightly unsure.

“Take off your shoes,” he says.

“Okay,” Jared says and sure enough he does.

Richard debates whether or not he should take off his pants, if that would send the wrong message but certainly not an untrue one. Finally, he decides to crawl under the covers first and shimmy them off.

“The sun’s going down,” Jared says.

“It’s strange sleeping at night again,” Richard says, making himself comfortable.

Jared makes room for him while still sitting in the same place. He absently starts moving his fingers over the blanket, tracing along Richard’s legs and his calves.

“Why did you come back? After I fired you?” Richard asks, shivering.

“You apologized and took steps to prevent the mistakes you made from happening again in the future,” Jared says, and then he’s smiling but he sounds pained, his voice cracks. “And I wanted to. You make it so hard to resist you.”

Because Richard’s a mess, because he can’t even fucking accomplish the simplest tasks and take care of himself, Jared can’t bear to leave him yet. The relief is palpable. He has plenty of time to get his life in order, show him he doesn’t, he doesn’t have to stick around, maybe even let him go while maintaining an ultimately false, but by all appearances painless facade of self sufficiency. In Carla’s words, that’s a pipe dream, but he has to at least try.

“Richard, may I-”

“Yeah,” he swallows.

*Jared gets under the covers with him. They move easily and settle in comfortably together. There shouldn’t be enough room on a twin mattress for himself and over six feet of flesh and bone and Richard’s personified want, especially face to face. But somehow, their limbs are just close enough to make it too hard for Richard to meet his eyes, but far too easy to just give into letting himself be comforted by this surely contradictive kindness.

God, is this inoculating himself, is this getting used to the pain? Is this what he does with his own want? He lets out a brief desperate laugh and bites his lip, breathing in and out slowly.

“You worry your lip and it worries me,” Jared says, thumb on Richard’s lower lip. “You should, hm.”

After what feels like the longest hesitation of Richard’s life, he twists away to bury his face into the crook of Jared’s neck. Not sticking his tongue out right then and there to taste him, to suck his thumb into his mouth and graze the pad with his teeth feels like the most difficult thing he’s ever done, or god more accurately, not done.

The room has almost fully set into darkness.

“You have to sleep now,” Jared says.

“You first,” he says back, and it’s only fair for him to lean up and touch his lips to Jared’s forehead, the only light taste he’ll allow himself, before settling back in.

-

Richard wakes up after only a few hours; it’s not even midnight yet. Fuck, his bed absolutely smells like Jared, and Richard just stays still and commits this to memory. It’s been so long since he’s woken up with someone holding him, and that’s definitely a boner against his back, which just happens sometimes and has to be unconscious on Jared’s part. Maybe he isn’t supposed to know what this is like, maybe it only prolongs the pain. He isn’t supposed to know what it, they, could have been. Why is this taking so long? Why can’t he get rid of this? Any of this?

His phone vibrates, an incoming call from Monica surprisingly, and he answers quickly so as not to wake Jared. He deserves to rest.

“Hold on,” he whispers into the phone, quietly extracting himself and stepping out into the kitchen where, surprisingly, Jian Yang is sitting. “Hey, Monica, it’s late. I was um. What’s up?”

“Is Jian Yang there?” she asks.

“Yeah, he is actually. I’m looking at him right now. How did you know?”

“Just put me on speaker,” she says.

“Yeah, okay. Uh, you’re on speaker now,” Richard says, shifting awkwardly, suddenly very aware that he only has on boxers and a tee shirt.

“Jian Yang?” she asks.

“Yes? Who are you?” Jian Yang asks.

“It’s not important. I have a message from Erlich.”

“I don’t care.”

“Yeah, you’re not alone on that one,” she murmurs. “Anyway, I’m going to paraphrase. Carla was right. There’s no way in hell I’m saying this out loud. Basically, Erlich has made friends with your uncle.”

“Yes,” Jian Yang says gravely. “They both have terrible taste. They both enjoy horrible Japanese culture.”

“Yes,” Monica says. “And basically he can convince your uncle to make life more difficult for you if you do anything to hurt Pied Piper or Richard.”

"Who is Richard?" Jian Yang asks.

“Are you kidding me?” Richard says, flabbergasted. “I am! We’ve lived in the same house for, how do you not know who I am!”

"You are very boring," Jian Yang says simply, and he turns back to the phone again like Richard’s just a glorified speaker stand.

“Why would I care?” Jian Yang says. “Engaged. To a girl from Taiwan. Very rich and very beautiful, but very stupid.”

“Are you moving out?” Richard asks.

“Yes,” he says. “You can keep the refrigerator.”

“Well, Dinesh will be happy to hear that,” he mumbles as Jian Yang walks out.

“That… was unexpected,” Monica says.

“Yeah. Do you want me to take you off speaker?”

“Yeah.”

“Is this what you’ve been up to the past few days? Are you, are you in China?”

“What? No, I have other things in my life besides Pied Piper Richard. And so does Erlich,” she says. “Somehow, he’s found a niche for himself out there. I had Carla track him down.”

“Oh,” he says. He could doubt Carla, he could pretend it was another prank on par with her usual modus operandi, but Monica wouldn’t lie to him, not about something so serious. “You and Carla again, huh?”

“No, it’s not like that,” she sighs. “Richard, you have to start taking care of yourself again. You have to get over this.”

“I know. It wasn’t about Erlich. Well, not really. Mostly not.”

“Richard.”

“Maybe a little but I’m taking care of, of things now. You actually woke me up when you called.”

“Really?” she asks, incredulous. “Are you telling me the truth? Is Jared there?”

“He’s still asleep,” he says quietly. “I didn’t want to wake him.”

It’s a small, slight admission, enough for Monica to pick up on easily. She’s always been able to see through his bullshit and he’s leaving himself completely vulnerable right now, hoping the ever stretching silence on the other end of the line isn’t a sign of recrimination or, fuck he doesn’t know.

“Okay,” she says. “But I’m checking in with both of you later.”

“You, thank Monica. I mean, thanks you. I. Fuck.”

“It’s okay Richard, I know what you mean. Take care of yourself.”

“I will,” he says and he’s not lying this time, really he isn’t. He’s going to fix his life enough for Jared to leave him, to show he’s self sufficient enough to get along by himself and let him go, he has to because what the fuck else is he going to do? It’s the only option he has.

He sits down and silently hopes he’s still wanted as he texts Ellis and waits.


End file.
